Gordon Brown is in trouble. Backbenchers organised in the ‘Hotmail conspiracy' are calling on him to go. One after the other, cabinet ministers have been deserting him in the middle of local and EU elections, with some - like Hazel Blears - transparently acting in revenge for Brown's criticisms over her involvement in the MPs' expenses saga. Pensions Secretary James Purnell, quitting on 4 June, echoed the call for Brown to step down. The papers are full of articles about Brown's weaknesses: he's a ditherer, he doesn't know how to smile, he's caught between New Labour's love affair with business and Old Labour's reliance on the state...
The Labour party is in trouble. A disastrous performance in the local elections, having taken the majority of the flack over the expenses scandal, and being the party saddled with managing the state during the worst economic crisis since the 30s, and on top of that still wounded by the shrapnel of the Iraq war...
The British parliamentary system is in trouble. MPs of all major parties caught red-handed over their expenses and yet appearing to get away with fiddles that would bring the police to the door if you were an unemployed worker accused of comparable misdeeds. Parliament is seen as a talking shop divested of any real power by the executive apparatus, as an outmoded gentleman's club, with MPs seen as party robots incapable of responding to the feelings of their electors...
All this turmoil in the world of official politics is the expression of a deeper malaise. Capitalist society is rotting on its feet and offers no perspective for the future. The ruling bourgeoisie increasingly resembles a bunch of petty gangsters out for number one. The Hazel Blears episode is typical of this ‘each for themselves' attitude which is quite prepared to put the desire for personal revenge or ambition above loyalty to party or nation. There is a profound tendency for bourgeois political structures to disintegrate: in many of the weakest countries of the planet, this results in civil wars and ‘failed states'. In the more advanced ones, conflict between individuals, clans and factions is not yet so openly violent but no less relentless. In such a situation, it is becoming more and more difficult for the bourgeoisie - even one as sophisticated as the British ruling class - to keep control of its political game.
But even when it's shaken by the decomposition of its social and political institutions, the bourgeoisie is not about to throw in the towel. It is still capable of coming up with political strategies aimed at hiding the bankruptcy of its system from those who least benefit from it. Above all, it can devise all kinds of false solutions which stop people looking for the real problems.
The Prime Minister has no charisma, he's a liability for the next election? Get rid of him then - a decision that seems to have already been taken by a growing element within the Labour Party.
The party in power is tainted with corruption and failed policies? Let's have an election and get the opposition in. Or if you think the major parties are all tarred with same brush, why not try a protest vote and put a cross next to one of the smaller parties (not the BNP of course)?
But perhaps the problem really does go deeper. Perhaps there are some fundamental flaws in ‘our' political system and we need what The Guardian is enthusiastically calling ‘a New Politics'. Let's have a robust, nationwide dialogue about how to reinvigorate democracy: maybe we need a written constitution, or proportional representation, or to get rid of the Lords, even the monarchy, devolve power to the regions and to local councils. We need to make the executive more responsive to parliament and MPs more accountable to their constituents.
In short: we need to reform the existing democratic state. Because what the ruling class does not want is any questioning of the underlying article of the democratic faith: the sacred belief that the people rule, even though, in reality, the people are divided into classes with irreconcilable interests.
In truth, the role of democracy is not to let us ‘have a say' in how society is run. Rather it is to disguise the dictatorship of the capitalist class. It is this class and this class only that ‘has a say' and it organises its rule through the power of the state. Democracy simply serves to present this state power to the working class with an egalitarian gloss. But whoever is elected to manage the state has to defend the national capital, increase profits and improve competitiveness on the world market. It can only do this by the continued ruthless application of state control over all areas of the economy, whether this is overt (as in the case of Stalinism and Fascism) or concealed but just as extensive (as in the case of neo-liberalism).
In a period where the economic crisis is the driving force in the development of society, this state will have no choice but to attack the working class. The attacks that are carried out against the working class by the bourgeoisie and its state are not the product of bad leadership, or the wrong party being in power. They are the products of the inexorable economic crisis which has no solution within the capitalist framework. In other words, whoever the workers elect will immediately exercise state power to defend the economy - and it will be the working class that has to pay.
Neither can this fundamental reality be altered by reforming the existing state apparatus with schemes to make it more responsive to the popular will. This is why Marx said, concerning the Paris Commune: "I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent." (Marx to Dr Kugelmann, "Concerning the Paris Commune", 1871.)
Today the "Continent" is the whole planet. The most democratic parliamentary forms of government have shown themselves to be entirely subordinate to capital and cannot be taken over by the exploited to be wielded in their own interests. The revolution that is needed to overthrow moribund capitalism will be obliged to dismantle the bourgeois state from top to bottom. And the resistance struggles of today that pave the way for the revolution of the future will have to organise themselves outside and against the organisms of the state, including the most democratic ones.
WR 5/6/9
The campaigns about the state of Britain's parliamentary democracy are not only designed to hide the fact that real political power is concentrated elsewhere. It also serves to distract attention from the deepening economic crisis.
While the media have been convulsed with concern over the Westminster circus, events in the real world of the capitalist economy have continued to show the inexorable worsening of the crisis. There is occasionally talk of the green shoots of the recovery being visible or that there might be signs of the beginning of the end of the recession. But you can't help thinking that if there was any confidence behind these tentative thoughts they'd been shouting them from the rooftops.
More reliably, during May the Bank of England was reported to be worried the "UK's banking system is heading for a third wave of crisis that could snuff out fragile signs of recovery in the economy" (Financial Times 8/5/9). Accordingly they pumped another £50 billion into the economy, ignoring recent buoyancy on the stock market. The brute figures, the statistics of how we live, are still getting worse.
The official figures for average wage levels have fallen for the first time in at least 45 years. Workers have been accepting pay cuts rather than lose their jobs. Unemployment rose for the last reported quarter at the highest rate since 1981. The number of people who lost their jobs in March was the biggest in the post-war period. It's not just limited to the private sector as councils are already making cuts that will grow as government policies take effect. The possibility of 3 or 4 million officially unemployed in the UK in the coming period seems more and more feasible.
The latest attacks on living and working conditions follows a previous period in which things were already going down a one-way street. As The Guardian (8/5/9) reported "Britain under Gordon Brown is a more unequal country than at any time since modern records began in the early 1960s, after the incomes of the poor fell and those of the rich rose in the three years after the 2005 general election. Deprivation and inequality in the UK rose for a third successive year in 2007-08"
While the papers have been feeding on the carcases of shamed or discarded politicians, the impact of the economic crisis has continued to be felt. In mid-May BT announced that it would be cutting the jobs of 15,000 workers, 10% of its workforce, making 30,000 over a two-year period. When the front pages are full of chatter about moats and duck islands there's not so much space for that sort of news
There's also the importance of the bankruptcy of General Motors. GM bought Vauxhall in 1925 and so for more than 80 years the British branch has not been immune to the fluctuations of the US economy. With tens of thousands of GM jobs lost in the US it is obviously a very worrying time for the more than 5000 Vauxhall workers at Ellesmere Port and Luton. Either one or both plants could close, and remarks about ‘restructuring' from Peter Mandelson indicate that jobs are bound to go, but he doesn't yet know how many.
The froth over MPs and elections will sooner or later be replaced by the next campaign from the bourgeoisie, as interest in Britain's Got Talent is replaced by the latest series of Big Brother. The ruling class will even make a spectacle out of its own corruption, anything to divert the attention of the working class from the effects of capitalism's economic crisis.
WR 4/6/9
The revelations about MPs expenses have confirmed what a lot of people suspected. Whether our representatives are cheating or just bending the rules it certainly looks like the Westminster porkers have their snouts in the trough. Although this should come as no surprise, many people are still angry and indignant about the whole affair. In a time of deep economic crisis, where jobs, wage levels and pensions are directly under threat, seeing our ‘political leaders' lining their pockets at every opportunity can only reinforce distrust in the whole parliamentary process.
On the other hand, there has been a tendency in the media to exaggerate the scale of the political difficulties this has caused for the ruling class. The Telegraph - which has certainly boosted sales by leading the charge in the exposure of the MPs' dodgy claims - saw the resignation of the Speaker as "Only the start of a very British revolution". A commentator on The Times (28/5/9) made comparisons with the Peasants Revolt of 1381 and declared that "the ruling class regards us with contempt. .... Meanwhile, we must fight their wars, fill their castles with food and pay the taxes they impose."
On the far left, we have had a similar level of hyperbole. World Socialist Web Site (18/5/9) identifies a real process but gives an overblown account of what it has led to: "Changes in mass consciousness happen suddenly and unexpectedly. The processes that bring them about have taken place over a long period of time and in a subterranean fashion. But eventually they break out onto the surface of social life, producing an overnight change in the way that the majority of people across many classes and social layers view the world. In the course of the past week, Britain has experienced just such a change in consciousness as a wave of anger has erupted over the question of allowances granted to Members of Parliament."
Recognising that politicians are on the make does not in itself represent a qualitative advance in class consciousness. Disillusionment with dominant bourgeois ideals is a necessary moment towards genuine class consciousness, but in the absence of an active class movement it can end up in a passive form of cynicism. And at the same time, the bourgeoisie and its media are working very hard to limit the damage such scandals cause - in this case, for example, advising us not to throw the baby out with the bath water because many MPs work hard for their constituents. And if you think that the current bunch is bad then, we are told, fascists or doctrinaire socialists would be a whole lot worse.
What is dangerous about this line of thought is that it poses the possibility of a ‘cleaner', less corrupt, more democratic government. Right, left or centre can all pose as new brooms to sweep away the old order. But whatever colour the state dresses itself in there will still be the same economic crisis and the same attack on working class living standards.
Class consciousness is not just a negative reaction to what the exploiting class is up to. It is also based on an active sense that it is necessary and possible to struggle collectively in defence of our own class interests. It goes together with a growing self-confidence and in the final analysis it requires a perspective and a programme for a fundamental change in the structure of society. For a real revolution to take place, anger with politicians and parliament must transform itself into a clear will to fight for a radically different way of organising social life.
Car 6/6/9
It is also true that the BNP represent a particularly odious form of racism, above all because their relatively respectable electoral image is only a thin veneer over the fact that their members and supporters are still directly involved in more traditional fascist practices: violent intimidation of political opponents and physical attacks on ethnic, religious and other minorities. But they are far from alone in that regard! It is not the BNP that have run endless media campaigns about the evils of immigration while simultaneously exploiting immigrant labour under the most appalling conditions. Nor is it the BNP that are ruthlessly stepping up border controls, putting asylum seekers in virtual prison camps and expatriating workers who have lived here since childhood, including hundreds of AIDS patients that are being forcibly returned to Africa. And nor was it the BNP that dragged cancer patient Ama Sumani from her hospital bed in order to deport her. All that was organised and carried out by the very legal, democratic and multicultural British state.
The BNP is simply a minor cog in a capitalist political machine that is racist to the core. If its racism is more obvious that other fractions of the bourgeoisie it also allows it to serve as a distraction from the far more widespread and dangerous activities of the mainstream parties.
And when it comes to campaigning in the EU elections on the basis of out and out nationalism, the left is not be outdone by the right. Take No2EU, a coalition initiated by the RMT union, supported by various leftist groups, and supposedly opposing the EU from the standpoint of defending workers' rights. No2EU serves up its own brand of nationalist policies with statements like "defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain" and "repatriate democratic powers to EU member states". Under the cover of standing up for all workers, they defend an insular, localist vision of workers' rights: "to ferry workers across Europe to carry out jobs that local workers can be trained to perform is an environmental, economic and social nonsense". What they are really demanding is the right of indigenous workers to be exploited by an independent British capitalism.
Despite the differences in packaging, the underlying ideological themes of all the parties are the same: they accept the framework of capitalist nation states and reduce workers to quarrelling with each other over who has the right to be exploited where. Against this, communists have to raise the old slogan of the workers' movement: the workers have no country!
Ishmael 6/6/09
Twenty years ago, seven weeks of demonstrations that took place in more than 400 Chinese towns and cities met with brutal repression from the Chinese state, not only in Beijing, but also in a series of operations across the country. The repression in Tiananmen Square on the night of 3-4 June 1989, in which hundreds (or possibly thousands) of people were killed was condemned internationally. "President Bush denounced China for using military force against its own people and implied that the action could damage relations between Washington and Beijing. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain said she was ‘appalled by the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed people.' The French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, said he was ‘dismayed by the bloody repression' of ‘an unarmed crowd of demonstrators.' The West German Foreign Ministry urged China ‘to return to its universally welcomed policies of reform and openness." (New York Times, 5 June 1989). President Bush announced reprisals against China, including the suspension of arms sales.
In the period since there has been no let up in the criticism of China's ‘human rights record'. However, this high-sounding ‘humanitarianism' is utterly hypocritical. We can expect more of it in October with the sixtieth anniversary of Mao declaring the People's Republic of China.
Look back at the ‘condemnations.' The regime that the US sold arms to had not suddenly been transformed one day in June. The reason the US sold arms to China was part of an overall strategy during the period of the Cold War - supporting China as another force pitted against the USSR. And the ‘universally welcomed policies of reform' had done nothing to disturb the dictatorship of the Chinese capitalist state and the exploitation and repression of the working class.
Last year, at the Beijing Olympics, Bush Junior went through the usual criticisms of China but praised the economy as being "good for the Chinese people" and Chinese purchasing power as "good for the world". This is the true face of capitalism - it cares nothing for ‘human rights' and everything for business.
It was, therefore, entirely appropriate for US Treasury Secretary Geithner to be in Beijing on 1-2 June 2009, just before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square repression, calling for closer ties with China. He was a "gracious guest". He told students: "Our engagement should be conducted with mutual respect for the traditions, values and interests of China and the United States" and "We each have an obligation to ensure that our policies and actions promote the health and stability of the global economy and financial system." In turn his hosts expressed their confidence in the various measures taken by the US government to deal with the recession.
There are clearly many differences between China and the US, and many parts of the world where they could at some point be in military conflict. However, when it comes to the preservation of the world capitalist system, they are united.
For the working class in China, the world capitalist crisis is having an impact with growing unemployment and the mass migration of millions. Official Chinese figures for 58,000 ‘mass incidents' (any strike, demonstration involving more than 25 people) for the first three months of 2009 show that workers are increasingly responding to the attacks of the Chinese state. For the whole of 2008 there were 120,000 ‘mass incidents'. The ruling class in the US and China want ‘stability' for the world economy. The working class has to struggle against the order that its masters want to impose.
Car 3/6/09
...The end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the eastern bloc, which Reagan had presented as the ‘Evil Empire', were supposed to put an end to the different military conflicts brought about by the confrontation between the two imperialist blocs since 1947. Faced with this mystification about the possibility of peace under capitalism, marxism has always underlined the impossibility for bourgeois states to go beyond their economic and military rivalries, especially in the period of decadence. This is why we were able to write, back in January 1990, that "The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and the coming disappearance of the bloc between the American gendarme and its former ‘partners', is going to open the door to a whole series of more local rivalries. These rivalries and confrontations cannot, in the present circumstances, degenerate into a world conflict...On the other hand, because of the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the presence of the blocs, these conflicts threaten to become more violent and more numerous, in particular, of course, in zones where the proletariat is weakest" (IR 61, "After the collapse of the eastern bloc, destabilisation and chaos"). The world scene soon confirmed this analysis, notably with the first Gulf War in January 1991 and the war in ex-Yugoslavia in the autumn of the same year. Since then, there has been no let up in bloody and barbaric conflicts. We cannot enumerate all of them but we can note in particular:
- the continuation of the war in ex-Yugoslavia, which saw, under the aegis of NATO, the direct involvement of the USA and the main European powers in 1999;
- the two wars in Chechnya
- the numerous wars that have continually ravaged the African continent (Rwanda, Somalia, Congo, Sudan, etc);
- the military operations by Israel in Lebanon and, most recently, in Gaza;
- the war in Afghanistan, which is still going on;
- the war in Iraq in 2003 whose consequences continue to weigh dramatically on this country, but also on the initiator of the war, the USA.
The direction and implications of US policy have long been analysed by the ICC:
"the spectre of world war no longer haunts the planet, but at the same time, we have seen the unchaining of imperialist antagonisms and local wars directly implicating the great powers, in particular the most powerful of them all, the USA. The USA, which for decades has been the ‘world cop', has had to try to carry on and strengthen this role in the face of the ‘new world disorder' which came out of the end of the Cold War. But while it has certainly taken this role to heart, it hasn't at all been done with the aim of contributing to the stability of the planet but fundamentally to conserve its global leadership, which has been more and more put into question by the fact that there is no longer the cement which held each of the two imperialist blocs together - the threat from the rival bloc. In the definitive absence of the ‘Soviet threat', the only way the American power could impose its discipline was to rely on its main strength, its huge superiority at the military level. But in doing so, the imperialist policy of the USA has become one of the main factors in global instability." (Resolution on the international situation, 17th Congress of the ICC, point 7 [10])
The arrival of the Democrat Barak Obama to the head of the world's leading power has given rise to all kinds of illusions about a possible change in the strategic orientations of the USA, a change opening up an ‘era of peace'. One of the bases for these illusions resides in the fact that Obama was one of the few US senators to vote against the military intervention in Iraq in 2003, and that unlike his Republican rival McCain he has committed himself to a withdrawal of US armed forces from Iraq. However, these illusions have quickly come up against reality. In particular, if Obama has envisaged a US withdrawal from Iraq, it is in order to reinforce its involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Furthermore, the continuity in US military policy is well illustrated by the fact that the new administration brought Gates, who had been nominated by Bush, back to the post of Secretary of Defence.
In reality, the new orientation of American diplomacy in no way calls into question the framework outlined above. Its objective is still the reconquest of US global leadership through its military superiority. Thus Obama's overtures towards increased diplomacy are to a significant degree designed to buy time and thereby space out the need for inevitable future imperialist interventions by its military, which is currently spaced too thinly and is too exhausted to sustain yet another theater of war simultaneously with Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, as the ICC has often underlined, there are two different options within the bourgeoisie for pursuing this goal:
- the option represented by the Democratic Party which is trying as much as possible to associate other powers to this project;
- the majority option among the Republicans, which consists of taking the initiative for military offensives and imposing itself on other powers at whatever cost.
The first option was taken up by Clinton at the end of the 90s in ex-Yugoslavia, where the US managed to get the the main powers of western Europe, in particular Germany and France, to cooperate in the NATO bombing of Serbia to force it to abandon Kosovo.
The second option was typically the one used in unleashing the Iraq war in 2003, which took place against the very determined opposition of Germany and France, this time in conjunction with Russia within the UN Security Council.
However, neither of these options has been capable of reversing the weakening of US leadership. The policy of forcing things through, illustrated during the two terms of Bush Junior, has resulted not only in the chaos in Iraq, which is nowhere near being overcome, but also to the growing isolation of American diplomacy, illustrated in particular by the fact that certain countries that supported the US in 2003, such as Spain and Italy, have jumped ship from the Iraq adventure (not to mention the more discreet way Gordon Brown and the British government have taken their distance from the unconditional support that Tony Blair gave to the Iraq adventure). For its part, the policy of ‘cooperation' favoured by the Democrats does not really ensure the loyalty of the powers that the US is trying to associate with its military enterprises, particularly because it gives these powers a wider margin of manoeuvre to push forward their own interests
Today, for example, the Obama administration has decided to adopt a more conciliatory policy towards Iran and a firmer one towards Israel, two orientations which go in the same direction as most of the countries of the European Union, especially Germany and France, two countries who are aiming to recover some of their former influence in Iraq and Iran. Having said this, this orientation will not make it possible to prevent the emergence of major conflicts of interest between these two countries and the US, notably in the sphere of eastern Europe (where Germany is trying to preserve its ‘privileged' relations with Russia) or Africa (where the two factions subjecting Congo to a reign of blood and fire have the support of the US and France respectively).
More generally, the disappearance of the division of the world into two great blocs has opened the door to the ambitions of second level imperialisms who are serving to further destabilise the international situation. This is the case, for example, with Iran whose aim is to gain a dominant position in the Middle East under the banner of resistance to the American ‘Great Satan' and of the fight against Israel. With much more considerable means, China aims to extend its influence to other continents, particularly in Africa where its growing economic presence is the basis for a diplomatic and military presence, as is already the case in the war in Sudan.
Thus the perspective facing the planet after the election of Obama to the head of the world's leading power is not fundamentally different to the situation which has prevailed up till now: continuing confrontations between powers of the first or second order, continuation of barbaric wars with ever more tragic consequences (famines, epidemics, massive displacements) for the populations living in the disputed areas. We also have to consider whether the instability provoked by the considerable aggravation of the crisis in a whole series of countries in the periphery will not result in an intensification of confrontations between military cliques within these countries, with, as ever, the participation of different imperialist powers. Faced with this situation, Obama and his administration will not be able to avoid continuing the warlike policies of their predecessors, as we can see in Afghanistan for example, a policy which is synonymous with growing military barbarism.
ICC 31/5/9
In response to this, there has been widespread condemnation from the ‘international community' with the USA, which currently has an estimated 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea, stating it would initiate patrols in the seas around the North. The response of Pyongyang to this was to state that if any of its ships were to be boarded by South Korean troops it would regard this as an act of aggression and respond with a huge military strike. What's behind this latest display of force?
In April of this year North Korea also faced widespread criticism to the launch of a missile, which it claimed was aimed at putting a satellite into space. This was disbelieved and seen as an attempt to test-fire missiles with long range capabilities. Behind this belligerence is an attempt by the North to strengthen its hand given two recent developments: the election of a new American President, and the failing health of its current leader Kim Jong-Ill. Undoubtedly North Korea, along with many other states, is testing the new President to see what reaction will be forthcoming from Washington. In continuity with the past, predictably Washington has come out in strong support of South Korea. It would seem highly unlikely, given the American troop presence in the South, that North Korea could seriously envisage any real kind of invasion or attack on the South, provoking as it would a massive response from the USA and a resultant obliteration of the North. Although North Korea has one of the biggest armies in the world, currently estimated at over 1.1 million personnel, its equipment dates from the Soviet era and would be completely ineffectual against US air power.
Much more likely is the idea of a strategy aimed at hardening their negotiating position. The fact that a country could test-fire nuclear weapons and also missiles to give a ‘show of force' in itself shows the kind of insane pitch that capitalism has reached. There always remains the possibility that things could get out of control, not only because of the particular irrationality of the Stalinist clique in charge of North Korea, but because of the fragile and uncertain nature of imperialist relations on a global scale.
One key aspect will be the attitude of North Korea's main backer, China, to these events. At the moment it seems that the Chinese, while reaffirming traditional ties of friendship with Pyongyang, are being unusually critical of the latest tests, no doubt fearing that they will lead to further instability in a region in which it is trying to impose its own form of ‘order'. North Korea is a vital security buffer for China, and also a vital part of any strategic ‘encirclement' the USA may envisage against China.. North Korea's economy is already in a deep hole, with reports of massive malnutrition directly linked to the regime's inordinate investment in arms. If North Korea should provoke any local military conflicts or if the regime should collapse, China would be immediately faced with the chaotic consequences, so its present cautious stance is understandable. But it is equally possible that China could be pulled via its alliance with Pyongyang into regional conflicts as a result of North Korea's adventurism and the inevitability of a response by South Korea and the US.
Graham 1/6/9
In the anarchist milieu today, notably in France and Russia, we are seeing a number of elements attempting to distinguish themselves from the nationalist approach contained in the defence of regionalism, ‘ethnic identity' and national liberation struggles, questions that are often characteristic of the weaknesses of this milieu. The catastrophic course of capitalist society obliges all those who passionately desire to take part in the social revolution to seriously examine the perspectives facing the proletariat - not only the prospects for the class struggle but also the development of the barbarity of imperialist war on almost every continent.
For the proletariat, faced with imperialist war, the only attitude that corresponds to its interests is the rejection of any participation in one or the other camps involved and the denunciation of all the bourgeois forces that appeal to the proletariat, under some pretext or the other, to give their lives for one of these capitalist camps. In the context of imperialist war, the working class must put forward the sole perspective possible: the development of conscious and intransigent struggle with the ultimate aim of overthrowing capitalism. In this sense, the question of internationalism constitutes the decisive criterion for an organisation or current being in the camp of the proletariat.
Internationalism is based on universal conditions imposed on the working class by capitalism at the world level - on the exploitation of its labour power, in every country and on every continent. It was in the name of such internationalism that the First International and the two Internationals that followed were born. Internationalism is based on the essential fact that the conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat are international: beyond frontiers and military fronts, beyond ethnic origins and particular cultures, the proletariat finds its unity in the common struggle against its conditions of exploitation and for the abolition of wage labour, for communism.
But generally, for anarchism, internationalism is more tied up with its abstract ‘principles' such as anti-authoritarianism, liberty, the rejection of any power, anti-statism, etc., than to a clear conception that this internationalism constitutes a class frontier that distinguishes the camp of capital from the camp of the proletariat. That's why, as we'll see, the history of anarchism is subject to permanent oscillations between decisive internationalist positions and positions that are humanist, pacifist, sterile or outright warmongering.
In this series of articles, we will try to understand why, at each major imperialist moment - such as the two world wars - the majority of the anarchist milieu, on the one hand, was unable to defend the interests of our class and allowed itself to be gripped by bourgeois nationalism, whereas, on the other hand, a small minority succeeded in defending proletarian internationalism.
The outbreak of the First World War witnessed the shameful collapse of the Socialist International. The great majority of its parties submitted to capital, declared a union with each respective national bourgeoisie and led the mobilisation of the proletariat for imperialist war. Similarly, the main components of the anarchist movement spoke of going to war for the profit of the bourgeois state. Kropotkin, Tcherkesoff and Jean Grave were the most eager defenders of France: "Don't let these heinous conquerors wipe out the Latin civilisation and the French people again... Don't let them impose on Europe a century of militarism" (Letter of Kropotkin to J.Grave 2 September1914). It was in the name of the defence of democracy against Prussian militarism that they supported the Sacred Union: "German aggression was a threat - executed - not only against our hopes for emancipation but against all human evolution. That's why we, anarchists, we, anti-militarists, we enemies of war, we passionate partisans for peace and fraternity between peoples, we line up on the side of the resistance and we have not thought of separating our fate from that of the rest of the population" (Manifesto of Sixteen (the number of signatories) 28 February 1916). In France, the anarcho-syndicalist CGT threw into the bin its own resolutions that called on it organise the general strike in case of war, transforming itself into a hysterical purveyor of cannon fodder for imperialist butchery: "against the force of arms, against Germanic militarism, we must save the democratic and revolutionary tradition of France", "go without regret comrade workers when you are called to the frontiers to defend French soil."(La Bataille Syndicaliste, organ of the CNT, August 1914). In Italy, some anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist groups launched the ‘fasci' "against barbarity, German militarism and perfidious Roman and Austrian Catholicism".
However, this convergence of the majority of Social Democracy and anarchism in favour of supporting imperialist war and the bourgeois state showed fundamentally different dynamics.
The position of Social Democracy in 1914 faced with war constituted a betrayal of marxism, the theory of the international and revolutionary proletariat and of its principle that the workers had no country. The rallying to imperialist war and the bourgeoisie in 1914 by the majority of anarchists internationally was, on the contrary, not a false move but the logical conclusion of their anarchism, conforming to their essential political positions.
Thus, in 1914, it was in the name of anti-authoritarianism, because it was unthinkable "that one country could be violated by another" (Letter to J.Grave), that Kropotkin justified his chauvinist position in favour of France. By basing their internationalism on "‘self-determination' and ‘the absolute right of any individual, any association, any commune, province, region, nation to decide themselves, to associate or not associate, to link up with whom they wanted and break their alliances'"(Daniel Guerin, Anarchism Idees Gallimard p.80) the anarchists merely reflected the divisions that capitalism imposed on the proletariat. This chauvinist position has its roots in the federalism that is found at the very basis of all anarchist conceptions. In arguing that the nation is a natural phenomenon, in defending the right of all nations to existence and to their free development, anarchism judges the sole danger in the existence of nations to be their propensity to give way to the ‘nationalism' instilled by the dominant class in order to separate the people one from the other. It is naturally led, in any imperialist war, to operate a distinction between aggressors/aggressed, oppressors/oppressed, etc, and thus to opt for the defence of the weakest, of rights that have been flouted, etc. This attempt to base the refusal to go to war on something other than the class positions of the proletariat leaves all sorts of latitude to justify support for one or the other belligerent parties. Concretely, that's to say, to choose one imperialist camp against another.
However, some anarchists succeeded in affirming a really internationalist position. A minority of 35 militants (including A. Berkman, E. Goldman, E. Malatesta, D. Neiuwenhuis) published a manifesto against war (February 1915). "It is naive and puerile, after having multiple causes and occasions for conflicts, to try to establish the responsibility of such and such a government. There is no possible distinction between offensive and defensive war (...) No belligerent has the right to claim civilisation, as none has the right to declare itself in a state of legitimate defence (...) Whatever form it's dressed up in, the state is just organised oppression for the profit of a privileged minority. The present conflict illustrates this in a striking fashion. All forms of the state are currently engaged in the war: absolutism with Russia, absolutism mitigated with parliamentarism with Germany, the state reigning over people of quite different races with Austria, the constitutional democratic regime with Britain, and the democratic republican regime with France (...) The role of anarchists wherever they are or whatever situation in which they find themselves, in the present tragedy, is to continue to proclaim that there is only one war of liberation: that which in every country is led by the oppressed against the oppressors, by the exploited against the exploiters"(The Anarchist International and War, February 1915). The capacity to maintain class positions was clearer among mass proletarian organisations which, in reaction to the progressive abandonment of any revolutionary perspective by Social Democracy before the war, were part of the revolutionary syndicalist current. In Spain, A. Lorenzo, an old militant of the First International and founding member the CNT, immediately denounced the betrayal by German Social Democracy, the French CGT and the British unions for "having sacrificed their ideas on the altars of their respective countries, by denying the fundamentally international character of the social problem". In November 1914, another manifesto signed by anarchist groups, some unions and workers' societies all over Spain developed the same ideas: denunciation of the war, denunciation of the two rival gangs, necessitating a peace that "could only be guaranteed by the social revolution" (See ‘The CNT faced with war and revolution (1914-19) [17]', International Review 129, and the rest of our series on the history of the CNT in IRs 128-122). The reaction was weakest among the anarcho-syndicalists most heavily handicapped by the weight of anarchist ideology. But from the betrayal of the CGT, a minority opposed to war came together in the small group La Vie Ouvriere of Monatte and Rosmer (See ‘Anarcho-syndicalism faces a change in epoch: the CGT up to 1914 [18]' International Review 120). The nebulous anarchist milieu was split between anarcho-patriots and internationalists. After 1915, the recovery of struggle by the proletariat and the repercussions of the slogan for transforming the imperialist war into civil war, launched by the socialist conferences opposed to the war at Zimmerwald and Kienthal, meant the anarchists could anchor their opposition to the war in the class struggle.
In Hungary after 1914, it was militant anarchists who headed the movement against imperialist war. Among them, Ilona Duczynska and Tivadar Lukacs introduced and propagandised the Zimmerwald Manifesto. Under the impulsion of the internationalist conference, the Galilee Circle, founded in 1908, and composed of a mixture of anarchists, socialists excluded from Social Democracy and some pacifists, became radicalised through a process of decantation. It went from anti-militarism and anti-clericism to socialism, from an activity as a discussion circle to a more determined propagandist activity against the war and active intervention in the openly fermenting workers' struggles. Its defeatist leaflets were signed "A Group of Hungarian Socialists Affiliated to Zimmerwald".
In Spain, the struggle against war was the central activity of the CNT, linked to the enthusiastic support of the workers' struggle that grew from the end of 1915. It demonstrated a clear will for discussion and was fully open to the positions of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, which were welcomed with enthusiasm. It discussed and collaborated with socialist minority groups in Spain that opposed the war. There was a great effort of reflection to try to understand the causes of the war and the means to struggle against it. It supported the positions of the Zimmerwald Left and made it known that it wanted: "along with all the workers, the war to be ended by the uprising of the proletariat in the belligerent countries" (‘Sobre la paz dos criterios' (‘Two criteria on peace') Solidaridad Obrera, June 1917).
The outbreak of the Russian revolution stirred up an enormous enthusiasm. The revolutionary movement of the working class and the victorious insurrection of October 1917 led the proletarian currents of anarchism to identify with it explicitly. The most fruitful contribution of the anarchists to the revolutionary process in Russia was concretised by their collaboration with the Bolsheviks. Internationally, the political convergence of the internationalist anarchists with communism and the Bolsheviks was further strengthened.
Within the CNT, October was seen as a veritable triumph of the proletariat. Tierra y Libertad considered that "anarchist ideas have triumphed" (7 November 1917) and that the Bolshevik regime is "guided by the anarchist spirit of maximalism"(21 November1917). Solidaridad Obrera affirmed that: "the Russians show us the road to follow." The Manifesto of the CNT said: "Look at Russia, look at Germany. Let's imitate these champions of the proletarian revolution."
Among the Hungarian anarchist militants, October 1917 led to more clearly oriented action against war. So as to support the proletarian movement in all its ferment, the Revolutionary Socialist Circle was founded in 1918 from the Galilee Circle. It was essentially composed of libertarians, which regrouped some currents from marxism as well as anarchism.
In this phase, the trajectory of Tibor Szamuely is exemplary of the contribution from a good part of the anarchist milieu that was attached to the cause of the proletariat. Szamuely was, during his life, a dyed in the wool anarchist. Mobilised on the Russian front, taken prisoner in 1915, he made links with the Bolsheviks after February 1917. He helped set up a communist group of proletarian prisoners of war and, during the summer of 1918, participated in the combats of the Red Army against the Whites in the Urals. Faced with the development of a pre-revolutionary situation, he returned to Hungary in November 1918 and became an ardent defender of the creation of a communist party that was capable of giving a lead to the action of the masses and regrouping the most revolutionary elements. The recognition of the imperious needs of the class struggle and of the revolution led the anarchist militants to overcome their aversion to any form of political organisation and any prejudices about the exercise of political power by the proletariat. The Constituent Congress of the Communist Party took place at the end of November 1918 and the anarchists, among whom were O. Korvin and K. Krausz, editor of the anarchist daily Tarsadalmi Forrdalo. The Congress adopted a programme defending the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The HCP "got to work straightaway setting up the power of the Councils" (R.Bardy: 1919, La Commune de Budapest, Ed La Tete de Feuilles, 1972, p.60). In the revolutionary movement, from March 1919, Szamuely took up numerous responsibilities including that of Commissar of Military Affairs which organised the fight against counter-revolutionary activities. Some anarchists, veteran mutineers of Cattaro (1918), formed its shock brigade under the leadership of Cserny within the Red Army. It was renowned in the defence of Budapest for defeating the sudden Franco-Serbian attack against the capital and in the support given to the short-lived Slovak Republic of Councils in May 1919. Because of their firm commitment to the proletarian revolution, they were known as "Lenin's Boys".
In Russia, at the time of the White offensive against Petrograd (October 1919), the anarchists demonstrated their loyalty towards the revolution despite their disagreements with the Bolsheviks. "The Anarchist Federation of Petrograd, lacking in militants having given the best of its forces to the many fronts and to the Communist Bolshevik Party, finds itself in these serious times (...) entirely at the side of the Party" (Victor Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution).
The experience of the world war, then of the revolution, confronted all revolutionaries with the need to make a complete revision of the ideas and means of action that had existed before the war. But this change wasn't posed in the same terms for everyone. Faced with world war, the left of Social Democracy, the communists (Bolsheviks and Spartacists at their head) maintained an intransigent internationalism. They were able to understand that the overthrow of the capitalist system by the proletariat, which was the only way to eradicate the barbarity of war from the surface of the Earth, was now on the historical agenda, and it was this that enabled them to embody the will of the working masses. They were able to assume the tasks of the hour by fundamentally situating themselves in continuity with their previous programme. They recognised that this war inaugurated the phase of the decadence of capitalism, implying that the final aim of the proletarian movement, communism, the ‘maximum programme' of Social Democracy, henceforth constituted the immediate objective to aim for.
It went quite differently for the anarchists. For those that only saw the ‘peoples', it was necessary first of all to establish their rejection of war and their internationalism on something other than the idealistic rhetoric of anarchism and adopt the class positions of the proletariat in order to remain faithful to the cause of the social revolution. It was by opening up to the positions developed by the communists (through the internationalist conferences against the war) that they were able to strengthen their combat against capitalism, and notably to surmount the apoliticism and the refusal of any political struggle typical of the conceptions inspired by anarchism. Thus within the CNT, the reception of Lenin's book State and Revolution aroused a very attentive study, leading to the conclusion that the text "established an integral bridge between Marxism and anarchism".
By leaving to one side the prism of mistrust for politics and anti-authoritarianism, the capacity of anarchism to understand the practice of the working class itself in its opposition to war and in the revolutionary process in Russia and Germany, allowed them to adopt a consistently internationalist attitude. In its 1919 Congress, the CNT expressed its support for the Russian revolution and recognised the dictatorship of the proletariat. It underlined the identity between the principles and the ideas of the CNT and those embodied by this revolution, and discussed its adhesion to the Communist International. Also, as a result of participation in the Munich Republic of Councils, 1919, the German anarchist E. Muhsam declared that "the theoretical and practical theses of Lenin on the accomplishment of the revolution and of the communist tasks of the proletariat have given a new base to our action (...) There are no longer any insurmountable obstacles to a unification of the international proletariat in its entirety. The anarchist communists have had, it is true, to give way on the most important point of disagreement between the two great tendencies of socialism: they had to renounce the negative attitude of Bakunin towards the dictatorship of the proletariat and yield on this point to the opinion of Marx. The unity of the revolutionary proletariat is necessary and must not be delayed. The only organisation capable of realising this is the German Communist Party" (Letter from E.Muhsam to the Communist International (September 1919), Communist Bulletin 22 July 1920).
Within the anarchist milieu numerous elements were sincerely committed to the social revolution and devoted themselves to rejoining the combat of the working class. Historic experience shows that each time the anarchists have adopted valid revolutionary positions it is by basing themselves on the experience and real movement of the working class and by working together with communists in order to draw out the lessons of this experience.
Scott 11/5/9
see also
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 2): Anarchist participation in the Second World War [19]
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 4): Internationalism, a crucial question in today's debates [21]
The first part of this article (in WR 323 [25]) by a close sympathiser of the ICC, examined the conditions for the bourgeois revolution in Britain and the lessons of the class struggle within decaying feudal society. This part looks in more detail at the political development of the class struggle in the early period of the English civil war leading to the formation of the Leveller movement.
From the start of the English civil war in 1642 the ruling class on both sides was acutely aware of the threat posed by the common people, and of the need for the skilful use of propaganda, lies, and repression to prevent the conflict between parliament and the monarchy from becoming a far more dangerous class struggle.
The majority of the landowning aristocracy sided with the king as the natural protector of its privileges, but the final formation of a royalist party was motivated as much by fear that a popular struggle led by parliament would lead to a threat to the whole existing order of society as by a desire to preserve the constitutional position of the monarchy. The coalition of interests in the parliamentary camp was equally conscious of the dangers involved in mobilising the common people, who it considered a threat equal to that of the royalist forces.
The objective of the bourgeoisie was to force the monarchy to concede political power to its representatives in parliament and to remove the barriers to capital's further expansion. The monarchy was understandably reluctant to lose its privileged position within the state, and despite extended attempts at a compromise, the bourgeoisie was finally forced to accept the need for a military confrontation. The first English civil war (1642-46) was initially an indecisive affair, partly due to poor organisation and strategy, but also to the continued desire of the bourgeoisie to find a compromise with the king that would avert a greater threat to private property.
Control of parliament and its army at this time was in the hands of the ‘Presbyterians' - the conservative City of London financial capitalists and those sections of the landed aristocracy opposed to the king - for whom any decisive victory against the monarchy would risk endangering their own interests. Opposition developed rapidly led by the ‘Independents' - the manufacturers, merchants and smaller capitalist gentry - who not only demanded a more determined war effort but also opposed the Presbyterians' attempts to establish a centralised religious regime, raising demands for religious freedom that gained them wider popular support.
By 1645 the Independents were strong enough to force out the Presbyterian military leadership and reorganise the parliamentary army under Fairfax and Cromwell, whose victory at the battle of Naseby effectively ended any military threat to parliament's supremacy. From this point on the English civil war was mainly a struggle for power between the different factions within the parliamentary camp, but above all it was a fight by the ‘men of property' to suppress the growing threat of an organised and politically conscious revolutionary movement from below.
For the poor peasants and landless wage labourers the burning issues were not the constitutional controversies fought over by royalists and parliamentarians, but poverty, unemployment and the destruction of their livelihoods. The whole period from the 1620s to the 1650s was one of extreme hardship for the exploited: in 1639-40 the English economy entered into a deep depression; political instability in 1641 and 1642 exacerbated already worsening conditions, and the final outbreak of war brought about a general collapse of the economic life of the country. Prices of food and other vital commodities rose steeply, both armies freely plundered, and the poor bore the huge burden of additional taxation imposed to finance the war efforts of both sides.
The 1640s saw a continuation of the struggles of the previous decades, with widespread riots against enclosures in many parts of the country. In the towns there were riots of apprentices, and as early as 1640 London was the scene of frequent ‘traitorous and riotous assemblies' and of ‘base people tumultuously assembled'.[1] Some of these struggles were directed at particularly hated royalist landowners, which the bourgeoisie tried to channel into support for parliament, and some violence was targeted at ‘papists and malignants', promoted by anti-catholic propaganda campaigns and scare stories of ‘papist plots'. But despite this the bourgeoisie remained very wary of encouraging the struggles of the exploited and above all conscious of the potential threat to its own interests: in 1642 Pym, the bourgeoisie's great parliamentary leader, warned the House of Lords against the dangers of "tumults and insurrections of the meaner sort of people", adding ominously that "what they cannot buy...they will take."[2]
The ‘tumults' continued with little interruption during 1642 and 1643 despite attempts to suppress them, and petitions to parliament expressed the fear - and threat - that the dire need of the people would drive them to more violent and desperate action.
There was little popular support for the war, and the peasants and labourers, artisans and apprentices, who formed the bulk of both armies mostly fought only when conscripted. As the supply of volunteers dried up and desertions grew, the ruling class was forced to make strenuous efforts to whip up enthusiasm through the use of religious propaganda. This initially had some success, but both sides and especially parliament increasingly had to resort to forced service (‘impressment'), which provoked serious resistance. The reorganisation of the parliamentary army under Independent leadership led to the creation of the ‘New Model Army'; a disciplined and highly motivated force which enjoyed freedom of discussion among the rank and file and became a hothouse of radical and dissenting views.
With the breakdown of press censorship and traditional methods of social control there was a tremendous explosion of debate and discussion, with a vast number of pamphlets and leaflets suddenly made available to the masses. In response to deepening misery, and as yet lacking the political language in which to express their needs and demands, the common people turned to religious mysticism, and there was a remarkable flowering of millenarian sects after 1640, which signalled an awakening of class consciousness. Although there was no explicit challenge to the existing order in the sects' pronouncements at this stage, their emphasis on the equality of all human beings, and their closeness to the radical traditions of the Lollards and Anabaptists (see WR 323), was enough to immediately alarm the ruling class.
As economic conditions worsened, the grievances and demands of the common people became sharper and more concrete. There was a growing recognition in petitions and pamphlets that the interests dominating parliament were waging war for their own interests and that parliament had deceived and lied to those it claimed to represent:
"We trusted you with our estates and you have rob'd, plundered and undon us; we trusted you with our freedomes and you have loaded us with slavery and bondage, we trusted you with our lives and by you we are slaughtered and muther'd every day. . . . You have fought for our liberties and have taken them from us. You have fought for the gospell and you have spoyl'd the Church, you have fought for our goods and you have em and you have fought to destroye the kingdom and you have done it...."[3]
There was a renewed and more intense outburst of religious sectarian activity in 1646 that indicated a deepening of class consciousness, partly of necessity in response to the increasingly hysterical political attacks of the ruling class. But more significantly some radicals on the left wing of the Independents began to deepen their critique of the Presbyterian-dominated parliament and to develop rationalist and materialist arguments for political reform.
In the absence of support for the war among the common people, the bourgeoisie's main allies were the petite bourgeoisie; the independent small producers, shopkeepers and tradesmen who shared many of its economic grievances against the monarchy, and particularly the Puritan elements who acted as an ideological vanguard against the king under the banner of religious freedom. But, hard hit by the collapse of trade and disillusioned with parliament, some elements of the ‘middle sort' began to question in whose interests the war was being fought.
Largely in response to increasing repression a radical tendency cohered around John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and others. Influenced by the arguments of the bourgeoisie's own political theorists, these radical writers asserted that the people were the source of all political power, and that parliament should therefore be directly answerable to the people who elected it, and protect the inalienable rights and liberties of all ‘freeborn Englishmen'.[4] They also expounded the myth of the ‘Norman yoke', which maintained that the English were a conquered people who had been deprived of their rights and liberties by the Norman conquest and held ever since in bondage by tyrannical usurpers.[5] Following the unprecedented popular campaigns against Lilburne's imprisonment in July 1646, this radical tendency was transformed into a mass movement, known from the accusation of its enemies as the ‘Levellers'.[6]
The Levellers in effect became the third party of the English revolution after the Presbyterians and Independents. They had a national presence, with their own weekly newspaper - significantly called The Moderate - to co-ordinate their activities, and were well organised. By 1648 they were established at ward and parish level in their City of London stronghold, with regular meetings of supporters and organisers, including women activists. The Levellers pioneered the use of mass political propaganda techniques, agitated inside the parliamentary army where they gained a significant influence, and sent their militants to intervene across the country.
Leveller manifestos and statements called for the dissolution of the current House of Commons, the abolition of the House of Lords, religious toleration, freedom of the press, equality before the law and the ending of trade monopolies. However, the movement was politically heterogeneous. The leaders were radical democrats who defended the right of every individual to private property and consistently denied that they believed in common ownership or the ‘levelling' of estates, as their enemies claimed.[7] The Leveller programme expressed the interests of the ‘middle sort' in society, voicing their economic grievances and calling for parliamentary and legal reforms that would defend the security of their property, but even this programme went beyond the limited objectives of the bourgeoisie faced with the threat from the class struggle. There also appears to have been a ‘centre' of the Leveller movement around Walwyn and others who were more sympathetic to the goal of common ownership, and there was certainly a left wing closer to the needs and demands of the landless wage labourers and poor peasants which under the influence of the class struggle gave rise to the ‘True Levellers' or Diggers who defended a communist vision.[8]
By the end of the first civil war in 1646 the bourgeoisie had achieved its main objectives: the monarchy had been militarily defeated; many of the obstacles to capital's advance had been swept away, and state power was in the hands of the capitalist class. But it now found itself confronted by those classes who had suffered acute hardship during the war, whose taxes had financed parliament's war effort, and who were now demanding their share in the fruits of victory. In particular it was confronted by a highly organised and politically conscious army of peasants and labourers that it had itself mobilised, but which was now putting forward its own militant demands. To concede these demands would risk further opening the floodgates of class struggle and threaten the foundations of the new capitalist order. Instead, the bourgeoisie attempted to remove the specific threat by disbanding the army, which only had the effect of uniting the movement and confirming to the common people that the victory achieved was not their victory.
Between 1647 and 1649 the deepening class consciousness of the exploited and oppressed classes was transformed into a revolutionary movement that developed simultaneously in the army, in London and in many areas throughout the country, which for several years seriously threatened to push the bourgeoisie's revolution far beyond the point its originators wanted and to challenge the foundations on which the bourgeoisie was attempting to stabilise the state.
The third part of this article will examine the development of this revolutionary movement from 1647 and the lessons of its defeat, focusing on the achievements of its most advanced political minorities.
MH 19/5/9
see also
Lessons of the English revolution (part 3): The revolutionary movement of the exploited (1647-49) [26]
[1] David Petegorsky, Left-wing democracy in the English civil war, Sandpiper, 1999, p.69. This article draws extensively on Petegorsky's clear Marxist analysis of the civil war, first published in 1940.
[2] Petegorsky, p.70.
[3] The generall complaint of the most oppressed, distressed commons of England complaining to and crying out upon the tyranny of the perpetuall parliament at Westminster (1645), quoted in Petegorsky, p.74.
[4] See Walwyn's England's Lamentable Slaverie, October 1645.
[5] See A Remonstrance of many thousand citizens by Richard Overton and William Walwyn, July 1646.
[6] The term ‘leveller' was first used in the Midlands revolt of 1607 to refer to those who levelled hedges during enclosure riots. Lilburne preferred the name ‘agitator', but the majority of the leadership eventually accepted the popular label.
[7] Which is why the political legacy of the Levellers has been claimed by the libertarian right as well as the ‘democratic socialist left'. Lilburne was the most consistent in rejecting the accusation of ‘levelling' but other leaders notably Walwyn appear to have been more sympathetic.
[8] Marx considered the Levellers as one of the first examples of a "truly active communist party" in the bourgeois revolutions (Moralising criticism and critical morality). It has been unconvincingly claimed he was really referring to the True Levellers or Diggers (eg. Marxists Internet Archive). But it should be clear from this article that the Levellers were not an organised party of the working class, which was still at an early stage of its formation, and were unable to provide revolutionary leadership to the radical petite bourgeoisie. It is unlikely Marx was referring to the Diggers, who were more correctly a small communist fraction that came out of the Leveller ‘party', and were probably unknown to him at the time.
But even if the danger of a pandemic was exaggerated and if the bourgeoisie made good use of that exaggeration, the disease is real and a number of extremely serious cases have occurred recently in Britain (more than in the rest of Europe in fact). The statement tries to place the outbreak in a more general historical context and shows that capitalism in its advancing decay can only continue to generate diseases and other disasters.
The bourgeoisie lives with an obsession: how to obtain the maximum profit. It is for this reason that the general norm for all governments is to reduce any cost that doesn't bring them an immediate profit or which seems to them to be useless. The one aim is to cheapen the price of labour power. The statistics of the International Labour Organisation, part of the UN, show that every year around the world there are 270 million industrial accidents. Result: 2,160,000 workers die. The collapse of the Pasta de Conchos mine[1], which left 65 miners dead, was just one of many ‘accidents' which workers are subjected to because the attempt to reduce costs leads to a reduction in basic safety measures. And often it's also the case with the ‘natural disasters' such as floods and earthquakes which leave so many victims among the workers because the mass of wage-earners live in such precarious housing conditions.
Millions of workers and their families are crammed into urban concentrations with little hope of escape. In these dangerous conditions, natural incidents such as earthquakes or a flood can become a tragedy of vast proportions which destroys thousands of human lives. And it's no better when it comes to explosions like the one that took place in 1984 in the San Juanico area of Mexico City. The technical and architectural advances which could offer better protection against all such phenomena are not even considered when it comes to the areas inhabited by the working class.
The same goes for everything to do with health costs. Here we can see that a direct diminution of the social wage has very grave consequences because the resurgence of diseases that were thought to have been wiped out or prevented from becoming epidemics, such as the various types of flu, find their principal victims among the workers and their families. Wars, ‘accidents' and epidemics are not inevitable disasters that we can only resign ourselves to. It's the capitalist system which is today preventing us from confronting these problems.
The rise of capitalism as the dominant mode of production was accompanied by the ascent of science and technology to sustain the exploitation of the proletariat and in this way to revolutionise the productive forces. By freeing itself from the control of religion and its dogma science reached unprecedented heights. With regard to health and medicine, unlimited possibilities opened up in the fight against diseases which had produced huge death tolls since ancient times. The objective of the bourgeoisie was obviously not to improve the lives of the exploited through applied science. But it did have an interest in extending its benefits, since the development of the productive process required a certain level of health among the workers so that they could keep up with their work. In addition, when the bourgeoisie took steps to protect itself, it was also obliged to some extent to allow the results of science and technology to improve the lives of the workers as well. Friedrich Engels described this situation thus: "Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, smallpox, and other epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and family from falling victims to such diseases" (Condition of the Working Class in England, preface to the second German edition, 1892).
But also and above all the struggles of the working class for the improvement of its living and working conditions forced the bourgeoisie not only to concede wage increases, but also to bring in more general improvements in its conditions of existence.
The struggle waged by the bourgeoisie against the old systems of production and thought was what made it a revolutionary and progressive force. Because marxism recognised this, it can affirm today that once the development of the productive forces had reached its limits and capitalism had extended its rule to the entire planet, the progressive nature of capital disappeared completely; henceforward a system which had brought so much to humanity became decadent and destructive. This senile phase of the system came to the surface in 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War. This butchery showed that capitalism was now being sustained by the sacrifice of 20 million human beings. And in 1918, as soon as the war came to an end, the epidemic of so-called ‘Spanish flu' killed between 40 and 100 million people according to different estimates. We know today that apart from the virulent nature of the virus that caused this flu, the speed of its extension and the high mortality rates it provoked in Europe were closely linked to the ravages of war, which had left the population exhausted and terribly weakened, and in a situation where the bulk of medical resources had been poured into the war effort. The flu appeared in the last year of the war and the national bourgeoisies of the belligerent countries (led, it seems, by the American contingent) forbade any talk about it and above all ensured that medical resources would not be diverted towards dealing with the flu. In Spain, a neutral country, the health services were the first and initially the only ones to talk about the pandemic. This is how the flu got its name. A name that is too long but more accurate would be ‘the flu that complemented the world-wide massacre'.
The system of production and the political relations within the bourgeoisie have ensured that capitalism is now synonymous with war, contamination and destruction, where the most impressive scientific discoveries have often been sterilised by the way this decaying system operates. In former times, science was subjected to religious obscurantism and now it's the interests of capital which prevent it from being used properly in the service of humanity. It is increasingly evident that the present system has become a threat to humanity's survival. It may seem paradoxical that one expression of this is the fact that diseases like malaria, dengue fever and tuberculosis, which once appeared to have been eradicated, have come back in force in recent decades.
Only an understanding of what the decadence of this system means can explain why there is a permanent danger of epidemics like the one we are now seeing in Mexico. The internet is packed with the most mythical and exaggerated theories about this epidemic, expressing the widespread distrust of the official version which stresses that this is a ‘natural process' linked to the life cycles of the virus and to chance, which obviously doesn't help us to understand what's going on. It's also no surprise that the left wing of capital and its trade unions (the SME for example) are doing all they can to hide the real problem by seeking the origins of the epidemic in the perverse actions of a particular individual or country, claiming for example that the epidemic spreading through Mexico was deliberately created by the USA, or that it's all just a publicity stunt to cover up secret financial and commercial deals by the government. These kinds of explanations, which may look very radical, simply defend the idea that there could be a more patriotic and human capitalism if only the activities of certain predatory states were kept under control, if the correct policies were carried out and if we were governed by honest and well-intentioned people.
But the origins of these threats to life on our planet are not to be found in a plot. They are the product of the very development of capitalism. The frenetic search for profit and an increasingly vicious capitalist competition can only lead to stifling levels of exploitation where living and working conditions are severely affected; what's more, with this desperate quest to reduce costs, increasingly noxious and polluting methods are being used. This is true both for industrial production and for agriculture and cattle-rearing, both for the countries that are highly industrialised and for the ones which are not, even if the effects of capitalism's destructive tendencies are more dramatic in the latter.
An example of this is the conditions of cattle-rearing: abuse of steroids and antibiotics (to accelerate growth), overcrowding of animals with a very high levels of waste which is thrown away without due concern for hygiene, exacerbating the danger of contamination. It is this form of production which has led to scandals like Mad Cow Disease and the various forms of flu.
To this we should add the attacks on health services and the lack of preventative measures which facilitate the spread of viruses. We can see this clearly in Mexico with the relentless dismantling of the Mexican social security system and its health centres, which are in general the only ones that workers have access to. There have been government reports about the danger of epidemics since 2006 (cf the journal Proceso no, 1695, 26.4.09), where it was argued that a virus known as ‘A type flu' could infect cheap poultry and livestock, mutate and attack humans. Reports were written, projects drawn up, but it all remained a dead letter for lack of any funds.
The appearance of this flu epidemic in Mexico has again exposed the precariousness of the conditions in which the working class lives: the aggravated levels of exploitation and unbearable poverty are the perfect soil for the germination of disease.
Newspaper investigations have shown that the effects of the virus were known about by 16 April and that the government waited seven days before sounding the alarm. The announcement of the existence of ‘swine flu' in Mexico on the night of 23 April was clearly not the beginning of the problem but the aggravation of everything that the working class has to put up with in capitalism. Despite the confused and doctored figures provided by the Ministry of Health regarding the number of people the virus has killed or made ill, the real balance sheet is not hard to draw up: the only victims of this epidemic are the workers and their families. It is the wage-slaves and their families who have died from this disease; it is they who have been expected to drag themselves from one hospital to another, often having to wait for care in overcrowded corridors where precious time is wasted and where the needed anti-viral drugs are often not available. While the official announcements tried to present the epidemic as something that was under control, the working class population cruelly experienced the lack of medical services, of medicine and preventative measures. It was also the workers in the health service (doctors and nurses) who now had to face even more dangerous and intensive working conditions, which led the medical interns at the National Institute for Respiratory Diseases to demonstrate and denounce this situation on 27 April; and despite the fact that this was a short and small mobilisation, the press covered it up.
The way this epidemic has been dealt with in the first weeks is very significant: the bourgeoisie and its state have argued that this is a matter of ‘security' which calls for national unity. But while the workers are exposed to contagion because they are obliged to use transport systems like the metro or the bus where there is a massive human concentration, the bourgeoisie protects itself in an appropriate manner with a single concern: how to justify the wage reductions that the bosses will have to impose to make up for the losses resulting from the obligatory closure of certain workplaces, especially restaurants and hotels.
There is no doubt that the bourgeoisie, in mid-April, was surprised by the appearance of a mutant virus for which it had no vaccine. It panicked and took a number of hurried decisions which served only to spread the panic among the whole population. At the beginning the ruling class was caught up in the panic, but very quickly it began to use it against the workers. On the one hand it used it to give the government an image of strength and efficiency; on the other, spreading fear encouraged individualism and an atmosphere of generalised suspicion where everyone saw the person next to them as a possible source of contagion, the exact opposite of the solidarity that could arise among the exploited. We can thus understand why the Secretary of State for Health, Cordóba Villalobos, justified (and thus encouraged) the aggressions which residents of Mexico City were subjected to in other regions of the country after they were accused of being ‘infected'. This high state official said that these were natural expressions of the ‘human condition'. The bourgeoisie lives in fear of solidarity among the workers and it is quite capable of using this affair to counter it by encouraging chauvinism and localism. It is this same nationalist strategy which capital uses in China, Argentina or Cuba to justify stringent controls over who enters or leaves its territories.
The class in power, by launching its campaign of fear, is trying to make the working class see itself as powerless and to accept the state as its only saviour. This is why the antidote to these campaigns of fear is serious reflection among the workers, enabling them to understand that as long as capitalism is alive, the only thing we can expect is more exploitation, more poverty, more disease and premature deaths. Today more than ever it is an urgent necessity to put an end to capitalism.
RM May 2009
[1] 65 miners died in 2006 in this mine in the state of Coahuila in Mexico. This ‘industrial accident' was in fact a capitalist crime, the tragic consequence of the exhausting work paid at $60 a week and of safety conditions worthy of mining in the epoch of slavery. See the articles in Revolución Mundial, 91 [30] and 92 [31]
The young generation of the working class faces some of the worst attacks on its living standards, shows the tendency to search for solidarity with other workers, to organise itself in assemblies. Recent student struggles in France and Barcelona reinforce the lessons of struggles in Greece last December and against the CPE in France three years ago.
Young working class people can have few illusions in the future capitalism offers them, even before the recession, with the highest rates of unemployment, and no certainty of any kind of job even after university. Higher education for the working class is no privilege, a world away from the well endowed elite universities (in France the grandes ecoles) usually paid for by minimum wage work in abominable conditions, such as fast food restaurants. Small wonder we have seen students struggling in France, Italy, Germany and Spain recently, as well as Greece.
In France students, and those working in higher education, have been struggling against the so-called ‘law on autonomy of universities' or LRU, which aims to divert even more resources to the grandes ecoles and away form the ‘sink' universities. There were already struggles against this in November 2007 (see World Revolution 310 [34]) when students sought to link with railworkers also on strike at the time. Students struggling this spring could call on the experience of those struggles, as well as the successful struggle against the CPE three years ago and the struggles in Greece last winter, with all the experience of demonstrations, of barricading universities, of assemblies as well as how they responded to repression. It is not always obvious what lessons to draw from these experiences, what can be taken from previous struggles and used today and tomorrow, and what are tactics that can become a trap if repeated in a different context. There is no recipe for the class struggle, no easy formula. What is always key to the strength of the working class is unity, the greatest possible solidarity within the whole working class. The withdrawal of the CPE was fundamentally due to ruling class fear of the growing solidarity for the students from the rest of the working class in France. This same solidarity among students, workers and unemployed was behind the strength of the movement in Greece last December (see International Review 136 [35]).
One of the students at Caen sent us a letter describing the struggles which give us much to think about. "At the start of the mobilisation there was a will to act in the most effective way. As well as the large number of demonstrators in the street there was a general assembly of the university uniting the teaching and caretaking staff as well as the students, undoubtedly drawing the lessons of the struggle against the CPE, which immediately decided in favour of opening its doors to all in spite of the vigorous opposition of the student union. Many participated in the day of action on 29 January, organised by the national unions, in this spirit of unity and extension. That evening an assembly, officially of education workers, was held at the university. This marked the peak of the movement..." The unions needed to avoid a situation like November 2007 when students and railworkers came together in their struggles before the next day of action on 19 March.
"In this context, faced with the risk of being overtaken by the struggle, the unions unfortunately accelerated their efforts to divide us which finally reached levels of absurdity rarely seen. Several days were enough for them to set up a myriad of ‘general' assemblies separating the teachers from the caretaking staff, from the students, so recently united in the same assembly. Each faculty organised its own little assembly, often on the same day as the others..." These sad little assemblies had to call the real general assembly the "general general assembly", and under union influence the ‘arts and media' assembly would denounce those studying biology and vice versa, using all the stereotypes that capitalist society imposes on us. It became harder to discuss as leftists repeated the same slogans, making it hard for speakers who wanted to widen the discussion, and finally ended the discussion by sending everyone out to blockade the university: "While paralysing a university can be the summit of a mobilisation and encourage meetings, it becomes truly poisonous when the ‘pro-blockages' involve much too few and are not valid in such circumstances when the questions implied are particularly sensitive, causing division and taking attention away from more basic objectives". In fact the students were divided up in all sorts of continuous demonstrations in front of all sorts of bourgeois institutions, town hall, museum etc.
"However, despite the damaging activity of the unions, there were very promising signs of students taking up the weapons of proletarian struggle. For example, several faculty assemblies opposed the division and dissolved themselves in recalling the sovereignty of the general assembly and the need for unity. Similarly students made many attempts to meet workers on strike against lay-offs at the Valeo factory... in vain, unhappily, to the extent that they were only able to meet a union delegation that came between the students and the workers".
Rather than get involved in useless actions our reader took the most constructive possible action in the circumstances, by participating in a discussion circle formed in opposition to the union direction of the struggle.
Spanish students are struggling against the ‘Bologna Process', which will allow wealthier students greater access to study abroad. During this struggle students in Barcelona have shown that however preoccupied they have to be with the difficulties of their own situation, they cannot avoid thinking about the future capitalism offers to the whole working class - including their parents and neighbours - as well their own precarious hope of finding a job at the end of their studies. They are also very indignant at the repression of young people by the Mossos d'Escuadra (Catalan regional police) controlled by the regional government left coalition (socialists, Catalan nationalists, former Stalinists) consisting of beatings, violent arrests and evictions.
If they remain locked in a ‘university struggle' they would be isolated to face all the manoeuvres and repression the regional government could impose on them. As they attempted to extend their struggle to teachers, workers in other sectors, school students, their strength grew, making the government hesitate. They played a full part in a 30,000 strong teachers' demonstration in Barcelona on 18 March, where they were fully integrated and not a separate contingent.
After their occupation of the university was ended violently by the police and the violence continued in the evening with numerous arrests and 60 of the 5,000 protesters injured, the students reacted by organising a demonstration of solidarity. The Catalan government was forced to make excuses and there were resignations in the ministry of the interior. Since then they have continued to hold assemblies, strikes and occupations, meet groups who support them, debating and exchanging information with other universities which have shown solidarity, such as Madrid and Valencia.
They distributed a leaflet affirming "we are not delinquents, not rebels without a cause, nor are we cannon fodder for the mossos and bureaucrats", and they remain determined "thanks to a large student movement, since unity is strength... not only to push back capital's attacks..." but also for "a just, tolerant and free society of solidarity" for "we feel we have sufficient capacity to change the reality we are living in" ("Some reflections... on the events of 18 March in Barcelona", leaflet distributed in the demonstration on 26 March). This demonstration relied on the solidarity of those who also recognise that things are getting worse every day without any perspective of improvement, on their comrades, the teachers, on all those who share their preoccupations, on all those who know that they are tomorrow's workers.
The regional government, meanwhile, prepared for the demonstration by building up the fear of violent confrontations, much as the British ruling class did in preparation for the demonstrations around the G20, with the mossos ready for "every eventuality" and an intense media campaign to prepare for violence.
The students and others remained firm on the demonstration, despite their trepidation, and when they found their route blocked by the mossos took the initiative to refuse this provocation and take another direction. Unlike a union procession, this showed the demonstrators talking, discussing, choosing their own slogans, and it grew with students, their parents, other workers of all ages ending up 10,000 strong.
The severe recession we are living through will face workers of all ages and in all parts of the world with attacks, with the need to defend themselves. The struggles we report in this article are only one small part of those going on all over the world today, including massive struggles in countries such as Bangladesh and Egypt. And we can be sure that increasing numbers of workers will enter struggle in the period to come as they digest the shocking reality of the economic situation that at present makes them hesitate.
The students' struggles hold a promise for the future. First of all, we see that the younger generation are not prepared to accept the future capitalism has in store for them, they will not put up with it without a fight. Secondly, they are not simply a response to attacks on them, but these students are seeing their struggles in the context of all the attacks (pensions, unemployment, etc) that make up not just their future but the condition of the working class as a whole. With this there is a tendency to seek solidarity - with other students, with others working in the universities where they are studying and with workers in other sectors - and to do so, when not diverted from this by the unions, by the most effective methods of open assemblies, demonstrations where all can meet in the street, and direct contact with others in strike.
When the working class can fight united across all sectors not only does it gain great strength, it can also pose an alternative, the only possible alternative, to the barbarity of capitalism.
Alex 5/6/09
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/illusions-democracy
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/mps-expenses-scandal
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/euro-elections-2009
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/nationalism-left-right
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/tiananmen-square-protests-1989
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/china
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/130/int-sit-resn
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/barack-obama
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/korea
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/imperialist-rivalries
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/nuclear-tests
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/129/CNT-1914-1919
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/120_cgt.html
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2009/326/anarchism-war2
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/327/anarchism-war3
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/328/anarchism
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/world-war-i
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/official-anarchism
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/zimmerwald-movement
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2009/323/eng-rev1
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3295/lessons-english-revolution-part-3-revolutionary-movement-exploited-1647-49
[27] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/english-civil-war-1642-1651
[28] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/english-revolution
[29] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/levellers
[30] https://es.internationalism.org/rm/2006/91_ultima
[31] https://es.internationalism.org/rm/2006/92_mineros
[32] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1848/mexico
[33] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/swine-flu
[34] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/310/rail-interventions
[35] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/2009/136/intro
[36] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/france
[37] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/spain
[38] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[39] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-struggles