Capitalism today requires an arsenal of ideological mystifications to survive. As an historically bankrupt social/economic system, capitalism has nothing to offer humanity except a future of misery, decay, and war. The ruling class finds it necessary to obscure this reality to keep the working class from recognizing and acting upon its revolutionary, historic responsibilities. The latest mystification the world bourgeoisie has rolled out from the arsenal is the green economy. Media pundits, politicians, economists and business leaders increasingly envision green industry expansion as a significant component of economic recovery. Some compare the green economy to the biotech and computer technologies in terms of its transformative potential for the American economy. It's almost funny to see all the corporations jumping on the green bandwagon, now that environmentalism is "in." Even the biggest polluters are now advocates for the green movement, like the home heating oil industry television commercial in the U.S. that claims that oil heat is energy efficient and environmentally friendly!
Like all ideological swindles, the green economy has a certain link to reality. There is indeed a genuine and widespread concern about the despoliation of the environment and the very real threat of climate change with potentially catastrophic social impact. And there is undeniably a disastrous global economic downturn that is destroying jobs by the millions throughout the world, worsening poverty and deprivation. This link to reality makes the green economy myth even more pernicious than your typical run-of-the-mill, trumped up propaganda campaign. The world bourgeoisie advances the preposterous claim that it has a policy alternative to save the day in order to short-circuit the development of class consciousness and the recognition that the environmental disaster and economic crisis graphically expose capitalism as an anachronistic system and poses the necessity for its overthrow in no uncertain terms. In so doing the bourgeoisie denies the fact that the current crisis is a systemic problem and pitches the notion that it is a policy problem that can be dealt with. The green economy, they tell us will revolutionize the economy and bring back prosperity.
Environmental and Economic Realities
The scientific evidence about the seriousness of the environmental crisis is voluminous. According to a report released by Barack Obama's White House scientific advisers, global warming has already caused significant changes in weather patterns in the United States, including more heavy downpours, rising temperatures and sea levels, rapidly retreating glaciers, longer growing seasons and altered river flow. This report anticipates that average temperatures in the U.S. could rise by 11o Fahrenheit or approximately 6o C by end of the century. The International Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in March, 2009, reported that "temperature rises above 2o C will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century." And the last time we checked, 6o is three times greater than 2o!
One of the key conclusions of the March Copenhagen Conference was that:
"Recent observations confirm, that given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-cast IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrives. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climactic shifts."
Regarding the economic situation, there is hardly a need to present here evidence of the seriousness of the current recession. The bourgeois media itself acknowledges this as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Since the current recession has occurred despite the myriad state capitalist safeguards and palliatives put in place after the Great Depression in the 1930 supposedly to make sure that such economic devastation never happened again, one could argue that this recession is even worse than 1929. It has certainly brought the world's biggest and most powerful economy, the United States, to its knees, requiring the virtual nationalization of the banking industry, the propping up of the entire finance industry and the bankruptcy of General Motors, the largest corporation in the world. They used to say "what's good for General Motors, is good for the USA."
The Obama administration first predicted that U.S. unemployment would rise to only 8 percent before stabilizing. Reality has already outstripped this overly optimistic prediction, as official unemployment has risen to 9.5 percent and Obama himself now openly acknowledges the unemployment rate will hit double digits before things start to improve. Even these bleak numbers seriously underestimate reality. In the U.S. a person is considered unemployed only if he/she has no job and has applied for a job in the previous 30 days. Unemployed workers who have not applied for a job during this period or have become so demoralized looking for jobs that don't exist and have given up applying for positions are by bureaucratic fiat considered to have withdrawn from the workforce. According to the American state, these "discouraged workers" are no longer workers and are therefore not unemployed!
Workers who have lost their jobs and can't find new full time positions, but scramble to find menial part-time jobs just to survive - called "involuntary part-time workers" - are not considered unemployed or even underemployed. Provided they have a part-time job of at least 10 hours per week, they are considered "employed" and what's more each and every one of their part-time jobs counts as a "job" in the statistics that record the number of jobs in the economy. Thus for example, a laid off 59-year old special-education teachers aide who lost her job nine months ago, now works four part-time jobs. Not only is she not unemployed according to the government, she alone accounts for four new jobs in the economy. Working as a fitness instructor teaching five classes a week, a day-care worker, a personal care attendant to a patient with Down's syndrome, and as a personal fitness trainer for private clients, she manages to pull in a grand total of $750 per month, which doesn't help very much since her monthly mortgage payment is $1,000.
The U.S. Labor Department acknowledges that there were 9.1 million such ‘involuntary' part-time workers in May and that if discouraged workers and involuntary part-time were included in unemployment calculations, unemployment would stand at 16.4 percent, not 9.4. Even the most optimistic prognosticators predict that "full" employment (defined as 6 percent unemployment) can't possibly return until 2013 or 2014 in the U.S.
The Green Economy
The green economy mystification was a key element in the Obama presidential campaign. In the second presidential debate in October, 2008, Obama said, "if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily." More specifically his campaign web site promised to "create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future." Programmatically, the Obama/Biden green economy proposal includes the following:
In February, 2009, Congress passed Obama's economic recovery plan which earmarked $80 million in stimulus spending for developing alternative fuel sources and other eco-conscious initiatives, which was widely touted among environmental groups as a down payment on the green economy. However, despite the triumphalism of the environmental groups, this paltry $80 million mathematically means that Obama will now have to "strategically" spend $149.92 billion dollars in nine years to fulfill his green economy pledge.
The green economy mystification is not simply an American phenomenon. According to a European environmental activist, "the clean economy is about to take off." The European Union is actively promoting green industry investment. European countries introduced their own carbon dioxide cap-and-trade programs in 2005. Germany has enacted the German Renewable Energy Act and introduced a feed-in tariffs(FITs) program providing incentives for clean energy investment. In Canada, Ontario Province has adopted a measure modeled on the German FITs. In Britain efforts to promote environmentally friendly investments are a central element in economic recovery plans. Australia seeks to increase green jobs by 3000 percent over the next several decades. Germany, Spain and Denmark have been promoting wind power programs. Germany and Spain have also been supporting solar power ventures.
Is the Green Economy a Magic Bullet?
The green economy is hardly the magic bullet that will save capitalism from itself. The comparisons of the green economy to the so-called "computer technology revolution" are spurious. This is no new technological revolution that will transform society the way the industrial revolution was able do when it transcended natural production and permitted the development of modern manufacturing, which decreased costs and increased production and helped raise the standard of living. When capitalism was an historically progressive system, capable of expanding the forces of production, when new technologies and new industries arose, they produced millions of new jobs, even as they may have destroyed old jobs and industries. So for example, the rise of the automobile industry, though it largely destroyed such industries as blacksmithing and buggy manufacturing, created millions more jobs in the auto, rubber, steel, aluminum, petroleum and allied industries. However today, in a crisis of global overproduction, insofar as it was able to reduce production costs and increase productivity, computer technology didn't revolutionize the economy, didn't enable the system to overcome its economic crisis, but on the contrary actually aggravated the crisis of overproduction.
The notion that fixing the mess that capitalism has created over the past century is the basis for economic progress is a complete fallacy. It's like saying that Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2004 was good for the economy because it created thousands of new construction jobs and makes possible economic growth. This kind of ideological sleight of hand only works if you leave out of the equation all the human suffering (death, dislocation, poverty) and destruction of productive forces, housing, schools, hospitals, etc. that was caused by Katrina. Fixing something that's broken is not "revolutionizing" the economy.
In any case, all the hype about how the green economy will produce new jobs is rubbish. A study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors projects an increase in green jobs in the US from about 750,000 today to 2.5 million in 2018, an increase of 1,750,000 jobs - much more modest than Obama's prediction of 5 million jobs. However, academic researchers from such universities as York College in Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois and University of Texas Arlington have challenged the Mayors' projections as wildly inflated, because they pad the job numbers with clerical and administrative support positions that have no direct involvement with clean energy production. In any case, even if Obama's inflated claims were accurate, five million new green jobs over ten years would be a drop in the bucket in this economy. Since the current recession began in December 2007, the American economy has lost nearly 6 million jobs to lay-offs and the economy needs 125,000 to 150,000 new jobs a month, or 1,500,000 to 1,800,000 jobs per year, just to absorb new workers coming of age and entering the workforce and keep unemployment stable. Thus, the alleged five million new jobs that will be created "easily" over a period of ten years will not even compensate for all the jobs destroyed in the last 18 months of the current recession!
Nor would the new green jobs compensate for the jobs lost in the oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and automobile industries that would result from the wholesale shift away from fossil fuels in what they call the "black" economy.. The highly promoted cap-and-trade program which allows polluting companies to trade allowances to pollute which has already been in place in Europe for four years has yet to have any positive benefits, as emissions levels have increased in the those countries.
Capitalist enterprises will only switch to environmentally friendly practices and investments if there are profits to be made. Since these new technologies require tremendous start up and research and development costs, they have to be very profitable. The only way that governments can promote the green economy is to introduce disincentives for continued use of fossil fuels and incentives to push companies towards green economy investments. So-called "free market" forces will never make this happen; it requires vigorous state capitalist policy intervention. This means increased taxes on the use of fossil fuel technologies, driving up costs for commodities produced by traditional manufacturing processes, and hence prices for consumers. And at the same time, it means government subsidies and tax breaks to green technology companies. All of this will of course be financed out of the hide of the working class, who will pay higher prices for "clean" consumer goods and higher taxes to finance subsidies and compensate for lost revenues due to corporate tax breaks. In the end the green economy that will supposedly "revolutionize" the economy and save the world from ecological disaster is ultimately just another way to foist austerity on the working class and erode even further its standard of living.
World capitalism is totally incapable of the degree of international cooperation necessary to address the ecological threat. Especially in the period of social decomposition, with the disappearance of economic blocs, and a growing tendency for each nation to play its own card on the international arena, in the competition of each against all, such cooperation is impossible. While the U.S. has been attacked for its refusal to participate in the Kyoto Protocols guidelines for curtailing carbon emissions, the nations who were enthusiastic participants in the treaty accomplished nothing in terms of reducing greenhouse gases in the past decade. Even when capitalism "tries" to implement solutions to the environmental crisis, the profit motive works irrationally to undermine social well being. The disastrous example of what happened with the profit-driven switch to produce ethanol from corn as an alternative fuel which prompted many agribusiness to switch from food production to producing corn-for-ethanol and contributed to global food shortages and hunger rioting offers just a taste of what a capitalist green economy has in store for humanity.
The Green Economy is a Smokescreen
The green economy is nothing but a smokescreen, an ideological campaign to give capitalism a human face. In its quest for profits, capitalism has debased the environment. The environmental calamity that capitalism has produced is yet another proof of the fact that it has outlived its usefulness, that it must be cast aside. But the green economy is a cynical response by the ruling class. They say they can fix the problem that flows directly from the very nature of their system. The distance between the promise of the green economy and reality is so enormous as to be laughable. The jobs it will create over the next decade won't even compensate for the jobs lost in the current "recession." They market ecologically friendly foodstuffs that are supposedly more natural and more organic, but are often priced beyond the reach of the average worker. To conserve energy, they tell us to switch from incandescent bulbs to fluorescent lights, which contain mercury which is disastrous for the environment unless disposed of in controlled manner.
No matter how you package it ideologically, capitalism works for profit, not for the fulfillment of human need.
There is no way for capitalism to extricate itself from the economic crisis, no way for a system based on the profit motive to save the environment. Only the proletariat has the capacity to salvage humanity's future --to destroy this rapacious system of capitalist exploitation of man by man based on a relentless drive for profits and replace it with a society in which the fulfillment of social need is the paramount principle in economic and social life. All this talk about green and black economies is nonsense. Only a red economy will offer humanity a future.
J. Grevin 6-30-2009
Most people in the U.S. are at least tangentially aware of the so called "drug-wars" that are being waged within the borders of their southern neighbor. Some months ago, in March, New York Times journalists wrote about violence "spilling" over the border. They cited some vague facts about homicide figures rising in certain American cities and then proceeded to hook the reader with some detective-like stories about a kidnapping and a pistol-whipping incident - incidents implied to be connected to the drug-violence in Mexico. While the New York Times and all the whole lot of the corporate media might be very competent at making sensationalist narratives out of these disjointed tragedies that imply that the crimes are related to a few trouble makers, the situation is different and worse. The escalation of drug violence in the US, as in everywhere else, is symptomatic of a rot that lies in the heart of the current economic world order. In order to understand this gangsterization of the economy as a convulsion of a decomposing capitalism, one must analyze it through its historical origins, its effect on class dynamics, and the obstacles it places against communist political clarification.
The history of narco-violence seems like a surreal circus of the macabre. The stories of corpses dissolved in hydrochloric acid and decapitated heads catching flies do signal something terribly wrong in the order of things. However as every massive social malaise, there is a material foundation deep within the heart of the economic order. In order to understand this material foundation it is necessary to start with the story itself. The rise of drug syndicates is certainly an international phenomenon - the appearance of the capitalist phase of decomposition around the late 70s, escalating in the 80s and 90s with the dissolution of the Soviet imperialist bloc, came with the rise of a decomposing bourgeoisie increasingly irrational in its lack of ideological direction and in the extent of its barbarity. One of these "manifestations" was the rise of international crime syndicates. These new "illegalist" capitalists came from all corners of the world - from the opium of Afghani "freedom fighter" Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to the new gangster-capitalism of the Russian mobs. However, the most interesting of these stories lies in the heart of the Americas. The story of the narco starts in Colombia. Although Colombia already had a history of international drug-trafficking that goes all the way to 1914, it makes no sense to talk about the narco as an almost omnipotent entity until the rise of the Medellin and Cali cartels in the 80s, when the profitability of cocaine transformed these gangsters into truly international paramilitaries. Increasingly, but assuredly, these new "gangster-capitalists" became integrated into the economy and the social fiber. They invested their gains in land, respectable businesses, and some like Escobar even participated in parliamentary politics. The current violent situation in Mexico (and its extension in the US) is more or less a continuation: the Mexican cartels' power does not reside in their productive capabilities, but in their monopoly over the routes through which Colombian cocaine flows and connects to the U.S. The same phenomena that happened in Colombia- namely the integration of these new mob-capitalists into the world economic order, happened more or less in the Mexican context. They lie everywhere in the decomposing layers of bourgeois society: within the state, and both in the realm of respectability and illegality.
The integration of the cartels into the world economy means that their differentiation from more "respectable" factions of the bourgeoisie is far from an easy task. After all, one of the aspects of decomposing capitalism is the rot of the ruling class itself, throwing into constant flux the demacrations between different bourgeois factions. The shadow of the narco, being essentially almost one with the ruling class of Mexico and Colombia, slides through the legal space of the transnational tentacles of world capitalism, making its presence known in respectable institutions in both Latin America and the United States. This hybridization of the ruling class makes more sense if we analyze it in the context of the current escalation of violence in Mexico. Most security analysts opine that one of the main causes of escalation of violence is the loss of political power of the PRI (Partido Revolutionario Institucional), when its power started to increasingly wane in the late 80s. The PRI has been traditionally a vessel of narco-politicians: from full blown narcos like Gomez Palacio's ex-mayor Carlos Herrera, to Carlos Salinas de Gortari, ex-president of Mexico, the latter whose brother went to prison for links with the Cartel del Golfo. The rise of the right wing PAN (Partido de Accion Nacional) came with the rise of a new faction of the boss-class, willing to challenge violently the strong grip of the drug lords over the Mexican economic and political apparatuses. The declaration of war against the cartels by this new faction of the state created an all-total war. Cartels fight each other for new territory as some of their political links to the state wane. Shots are heard routinely in the barrios: hitmen from different cartels get into fast paced car gunfights, shooting each other, the cops, and the military alike. Calderon, president of Mexico, himself admitted that just in 2008, 6500 people have died in this civil war. Yet, this context of total war might be deceiving, for many bosses high up in the state and behind many respectable businesses have links with drug trafficking.
As stated before, the legal space of these gangster-capitalists extends all the way to the U.S. Money laundering occurs not just in small businesses, but in the heart of American finance capital itself - the big banks. On April 26, 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that more than $11 million were laundered in the Wachiovia bank within the accounts of known drug traffickers. The U.S. Justice Department also reported numerous banks, including American Express International, which allegedly laundered more than $55 million, have been involved in money laundering operations. Further south, we see the US funding the Colombian government with "Plan Colombia" money to counter the drug-traffickers while it was this same Colombian government that protected and encouraged the narco-founded right-wing paramilitaries. Similar, the U.S. government claims that 90 percent of the guns seized from the Mexican drug-traffickers can be traced back to the U.S. These weapons, the use of which sometimes makes for spectacular headlines in the press, can be as sophisticated as rocket launchers and hand grenades. On the opposite side of "legality", the spilling of violence into the borders of the US just confirms the international aspect of decomposition, and thus this tendency to gangsterization.
And yet, as always in the times of social chaos, the media and the other mouthpieces of the dominant class try to diminish the importance of class. In their discourse of legalist doublespeak, the media tries to convey this as a war between the legalist "good" and the criminal "bad." To us communists, this type of discourse is meaningless. It has no meaning even in the myopic limits of the dominant's class discourse, for in some parts of Mexico the narco and the state are one. While in this period of decomposition, the bourgeoisie seems to lose the ideological clarity it once had, in the structural level it is still the bourgeoisie who causes these wars and it is still the working class who suffers and becomes the foot-soldiers. Whether the bosses are "soviets", democrats, or criminal gangs, there are still these capitalist wars - product of the tendency of decadent capitalism to descend into savagery. In the end, it is the workers that pay when the gunshots ring in their neighborhoods, and when they are sent to pull each others' intestines out in the name of either legality or gangster morality. The descent of decadent capitalism into decomposition reaffirms even more urgently that old slogan of "socialism or barbarism".
Ricardo Santiago 7-02-2009
We are publishing here a shorter version of a statement by Revolución Mundial, the ICC's section in Mexico, about the outbreak of swine flu which began in that country. After the first weeks of panic and doom-mongering, the new strain of flu almost disappeared from the headlines.
But even if the danger of a pandemic was exaggerated and if the bourgeoisie made good use of that exaggeration, the disease is real and a number of extremely serious cases have occurred in the US particularly in the New York City area where 23 people have died by mid-June, the most in the nation.
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 industrialized 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 centers, 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 mobilization, 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 generalized 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 savior. 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.
As reported on our website [9], in April 2009 Internationalism hosted a weekend-long Days of Discussion conference which brought together a number of correspondents, readers, and sympathizers from geographically dispersed parts of the US and Canada for a much needed opportunity to meet face to face (often for the first time), to learn from each other, to exchange views, to deepen our understanding, the better to contribute to the development of class consciousness and class struggle in the period ahead. The agenda was developed in consultation with the participants and addressed the strategy of the bourgeoisie in the current economic crisis, the response of the working class, and the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle. An additional discussion focused on Darwinism and the workers movement. Presentations for each discussion were prepared by non-members of the ICC and were intended not so much to present any particular position but rather to serve as point of departure for the discussion.
In order to give readers a better appreciation of the content and quality of the discussions at the conference and to share more fully the fruit of this important conference, we publish in this report the presentations on the strategy of the bourgeoisie and the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle. The presentations have been edited slightly for reasons of space. Each is followed by a brief description of the discussion. - Internationalism, July 2009.
Presentation by Roza
1. Introduction
This presentation will limit itself to the economic and monetary-policy strategies employed by the current Barack Obama Administration to manage the current problems of a continually deteriorating U.S. economy. Obama's strategy of choice seems to be one in which desperation is quite evident, and which merely seeks to alleviate, in the short-term, the problems the country currently faces. Though its price tag would imply otherwise, the economic-monetary strategy employed is actually modest, as the state of a moribund U.S. capital takes away much of the incentive to seek long-term, stronger solutions to the problem. If the patient's disease is terminal, a palliative approach makes sense.
The harshness and distastefulness of these economic-monetary remedies require an ideological/political approach that will make austerity more palatable to the masses, who are either unemployed or are facing the very real possibility of unemployment in the near future while watching the financial sector receive aid many believe it does not deserve. The administration seems to hoped that mass austerity and the propping up of the financial sector will be accepted as "necessary evils" to be endured on the "road to recovery"-though, of course, the most likely scenario is that the bourgeoisie are counting on normalizing austerity so as to make it palatable indefinitely beyond a period of "recovery."
One of the ingenious, and thus dangerous, aspects of the Obama Administration is the relative ease and success with which it has thus far substituted lofty words for concrete plans (even the bourgeois type of plans!); and sold to the masses vacuity as substance. As the current Manager-In-Charge, Obama will continue to try to perfect his administration's record as most effective snake-oil sales team through its plan to use the current widespread (and blind and uncritical) distaste for the Bush Administration and the current economic crisis, as a means to implement a social approach to the crisis, reminiscent of the Clinton Administration's portrayal of the dismantling of the remaining social safety net in the U.S. as responsible and needed "reform."
2. Economic Level
The U.S., and indeed the world bourgeoisie, faces the most serious economic crisis since at least the Great Depression. The meltdown of the housing market from the second half of 2006 provoked a massive financial crisis on Wall Street, which posed the possibility, in Fall 2008, of the complete collapse of the global financial system.
Since the fall of last year, only massive state intervention into the economy, in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in cash infusions and asset purchases, has kept the U.S. and global economies from total impasse. However, even as the U.S. state flexes its muscles to prop up the banks, insurance companies, etc., the U.S. working class is being devastated. Massive layoffs have led to levels of official unemployment not seen since the recession of the early 1980s. And as everyone here knows, the official unemployment numbers do not begin to accurately describe the depth of the situation faced by the long-term unemployed who are not included in the official statistics
Faced with this situation, even bourgeois commentators have openly asked themselves if "capitalism is finished." [1] While the rosier prognosticators continue to claim that recovery will happen sometime in the next year, the general consensus seems to be no consensus at all about how long the economic crisis will last and to what depths it will reach.
One thing is certain: The U.S. bourgeoisie will respond to this crisis by strengthening its state capitalist apparatus. Already, through the T.A.R.P. plan and through direct cash investments into the banks, the U.S. bourgeoisie has virtually nationalized the banking industry-at least temporarily. The U.S. government is now a major shareholder in banks such as CitiGroup and Bank of America, has encouraged or supervised the merger of other banks or financial companies, and taken a major step to shore up the banks and other financial institutions by bailing out AIG.
After nearly 30 years of so-called Reaganomics, which saw the U.S. state lift numerous regulations in the banking sector and throughout the economy as a whole, the Obama Administration has begun to implement an economic policy which some economists believe is reminiscent of the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Based on the theories of John Maynard Keynes, the American state is attempting to correct the economic crisis by taking a central place in the management and direction of the economy.
However, the nature of the Obama administration's turn to Keynesianism is up for debate: will it invest on military adventures or in the direct investment on the productive (or potentially productive) sectors of the economy?
There are two types of Keynesianism: "weak" and "strong." In the weak version, the state increases its "defense" budget and engages in militaristic adventures abroad in order to increase the market for military goods and the secondary institutions that support it. In the "strong" version, what economic historians have identified with the New Deal, the state engages in deficit spending and job creation. It intervenes on the social level with the goal to create jobs, lower unemployment and stimulate demand and consumption through massive infrastructure programs and investment. [2]
Both of these versions, however, have their problems from the point of view of the bourgeoisie. On the one hand, one of the problems with weak Keynesianism is that it requires significant increases in the state's military budget. The United States military is already stretched precariously thin, thanks in part to the militaristic presidency of George W. Bush, even as it claims to be winding down its mission in Iraq. The Obama Administration, however, perhaps in an attempt to both continue its imperialist agenda and to prop up the economy to some extent through weak Keynesianism, has proposed a $527 billion (excluding war costs) FY 2010 defense budget, which has been calculated as an 8% increase from the FY 2009 Bush Administration allocation of $487.7 billion. [3] True to his promise during the campaign when he insisted he was "not against all wars, only stupid wars," his will not be a "peace" administration, but rather as much a bellicose administration as the eight years of George W. Bush were.
On the other hand, strong Keynesianism's efficacy is limited by the appearance of the proverbial "white elephant," as the cost of job creation and infrastructure building at one point become too costly and absurd to continue. [4] The Obama Administration has not so far made serious overtures towards this type of economic policy other than to propose minuscule subsidies toward the growth of a "green economy," and to pay similar lip-service toward other such initiatives. As things stand, after its financial sector bailout efforts, the U.S. Treasure finds further deficit spending extremely difficult. Furthermore, deficit spending (provided it is successful in creating jobs), combined with bailout money, poses the risk of runaway inflation once full(er) employment wages and the cash injections made to the financial sector begin circulating in the broader economy.
Perhaps one of the most dangerous consequences of the current monetary and economic policies is the collapsing value of the dollar. As the U.S. tentatively feels its way out of the current economic crisis, the central banks abroad could begin to "diversify" their foreign currency holdings away from the dollar, and the OPEC countries to begin "shifting" away from pricing its crude in U.S. dollars. As confidence in the U.S. economy (and the dollar in particular) weakens, and as the U.S. national debt continues its upward climb, the U.S. could experience a devaluation of its national currency, spelling the end of U.S. imperial omnipotence.
3. Political / Ideological level
During the past six months, just as the economy was collapsing around them, the U.S. bourgeoisie enjoyed a temporary political and ideological boost with the election of Barack Obama. The Obama campaign's rhetoric of hope and change, coupled with the media barrage regarding the historic nature of the election of the first African American President, served to deflect most social and political unrest into electoral politics. For some time, it appeared that a messiah had arisen who would fix the economy, end the war, pay your mortgage, cancel your credit card debt and create a utopia of brotherhood on earth. The bourgeoisie will continue to play on these themes to the extent that it can in the period ahead, particularly with some of the most vulnerable groups in the population.
However, almost as soon as Obama took office, another message was propagated stressomg the tough road ahead to fix the myriad of economic, political and social problems "created by the irresponsible George W. Bush administration." The American population was told that things would get worse before they get better, and that there would be no easy turn around in the immediate future. They were told to prepare for sacrifice in the form of continued job losses and lack of access to credit. Recently, Obama has taken this rhetoric further, arguing that Americans must learn to consume less and export more. [5] The glory days of consumerism fueled by home equity and credit cards is now over. If Obama has kept one promise, it is that of "change:" A change from a credit-subsidized consumption bubble (which to some extent propped up the standard of living for the working class for the last two decades); to direct austerity in the form of a declining standard of living and record unemployment. "Change we can believe in," indeed!
While the Bush and Obama administrations work feverishly to prop up the banks and financial sector, they simultaneously work to smash whatever remnants of "high wage" and "high benefit" employment remains, with serious talk of forcing General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy. The unions for their part are only too happy to oblige, agreeing to "compromises" in order to keep the companies solvent. [6] The Obama administration, with full cooperation of its Republican mouthpieces in Congress and the media, have taken advantage of the crisis to mobilize public opinion against the auto workers, labeling them overpaid special interests. [7]
4. Social level
On the social level, the U.S. bourgeoisie has taken advantage of the economic crisis and Obama's election to continue the policies of previous administrations to impose austerity against the working class.
However, the Obama administration has also hinted at certain measures that appear on the surface to be reforms. In particular, he has announced a supposedly ambitious plan to enact a "universal" health care system in the U.S., the absence of which drags down the U.S.'s international competitiveness. [8] Obama's attempt to change the health care system in the U.S. is above all an attempt to rationalize health care delivery from the point of view of the state. The American system of public education is yet another area in which Obama seems to plan further "reforms." His appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, suggests that public schools and their teachers will continue to experience the attacks begun under the Bush Administration. From No Child Left Behind, we will soon see No Teacher Left Standing. [9]
5. Questions for discussion
1. To what extent can the Keynesianism of the Obama administration succeed in alleviating the worst effects of the economic crisis? Is a new New Deal really possible?
2. To What extent are the ideological campaigns about socialism emanating from the Republicans reflective of a real split in the U.S. bourgeoisie regarding how to handle its response to the crisis?
3. Is the bourgeoisie's willingness to bail out the banks reflective of the domination of finance over productive capital? To what extent is this distinction useful for understanding the capitalist economy today?
4. What is the meaning of the attacks on the autoworkers for the broader working class response to the crisis?
5.Will the Obama administration be successful in imposing austerity withut provoking a serious working class response? Are confrontations of the scale witnessed in France, Greece and other European countries likely to happen in the U.S. Why or why not?
Notes
1. See for example Tobin Harshaw's blog for the New York Times, "Weekend Opinionator: A Different Kind of Red America [10]"; (Press TV's interview with Noam Chomsky; David Harvey's "The End of Capitalism? A Response to Tim Geithner [11]"; and The Atlantic's "The End of Capitalism? [12]".
2. Harvey, David. "Why the U.S. Stimulus Package is Bound to Fail. [13]" Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey, February 12, 2009.
3 Congressional Quarterly. "White House Draws Line on Defense Budget." CQ Politics, February 2, 2009.
4. See this article [14] for a brief definition of the economic "White Elephant;" and Kevin Depew's commentary, "Two Ways to Play", broadcast on PBS's Nightly Business Report on February 5, 2009, for a brief critique of public works spending.
5. ibid.
6. Dwyer, Dustin and Michele Norris. "United Auto Workers Open to Contract Changes [15]." National Public Radio, All Things Considered, December 3, 2008.
7. Weber, Sarah. "Local Auto Workers Frustrated by Lack of Support From Fellow Americans." Sandusky Register Online, February 21, 2009. Maddow, Rachel. "Talk Me Down! Since When are Auto Workers the Fat Cats?" Newsvine, November 26, 2008.
8. Kaufman, Marc and Rob Stein. "Record Share of Economy Spent on Health Care [16]." The Washington Post, January 10, 2006.
9 Giroux, Henry A. and Kenneth Saltman. New Catholic Times, January 19, 2009. Rossi, Rosalind and Lynn. Chicago Sun-Times, December 15, 2008.
10.https://en.internationalism.org/wr/318/doortostruggles [17]
The presentation triggered a very stimulating discussion which stressed the importance of placing the current economic situation in an historic context. In particular it was noted that the present recession is but the latest manifestation of the permanent crisis of capitalist overproduction, and that the current crisis is in fact the worst capitalist crisis in history since it has occurred despite all the state capitalist palliatives that were put in place in the 1930's. Regarding the recent media fixation on the distinction between finance and productive capital and the significance of this differentiation, the conference felt that this campaign was an ideological manipulation needed by the bourgeoisie for the purpose of obscuring the perspective of "no future" that capitalism offers to the working class. The campaign to blame the "evil" bankers for the current crisis seeks to obscure the fact that this is fundamentally a crisis of capitalist overproduction. This ideology will be utilized also to try to impose and justify austerity attacks against the working class. Repeatedly it was stressed that the ruling class has no way out the crisis, no choice but to continue to resort to debt, military expansionism, strengthened state capitalism, and austerity against the working class. A number of points that needed to be deepened in further research and discussion were identified, particularly the growing weight of gangsterism or illegality in economic life.
Presentation by Jogiches
In Class Consciousness and Communist Organization, the ICC quotes Marx as saying: "Theory is only realized in the masses to the extent that it is a realization of their needs..." and goes one to say, speaking of Bolshevik intervention in the class struggle in 1917,
"...the party had to go beyond the illusions remaining among the proletariat...Rather than waiting for the working class to get rid of them itself, without any intervention from its vanguard, it had to, on the contrary, put itself ahead of the confused aspirations of the workers, give them a clear expression, facilitate the development of class consciousness, act in such a way that the proletariat might arrive at a conception of its real historical interests. For Lenin, this was not a matter of flattering the prejudices that most workers still held to, nor of acting without taking into account the level of consciousness of the working masses, but of generalizing throughout the proletariat the awareness of the necessity for the seizure of power and of making the proletariat capable itself of realizing its historical task."
I read a quote from an article in Internationalism that said: "A working class that can't defend itself can't make a revolution." 10 which made a lot of sense to me in terms of revolutionaries intervening in the class struggle. Along those same lines, there was an article in last month's Internationalism that said:
"A social revolution can only be made by those ‘below', those who have least to gain from the preservation of the existing order. But those below will never advance towards making a revolution unless they forge themselves into a force that is capable of defending itself today, of fighting against every encroachment made by the capitalist system - every factory closure, every benefit cut, every wage reduction, every attempt of the bosses and the state to repress this resistance and victimize those who take part in it."
In some senses, defensive class struggle is a precondition to revolutionary offensive struggle--the intervention of revolutionaries must be to encourage the extension of these defensive struggles. But what is our role in these struggles? Is it our role to initiate them?
I was speaking to a Trotskyist who quoted me an old maxim he'd heard saying that "'sectarians' are like a man standing on the shore shouting swimming instructions to a drowning man (the working class), whereas what is needed is to throw the drowning man a lifesaver or swimming out to him to carry him to shore" Such a conception is false because, to extend the metaphor, the drowning man doesn't learn to swim. The entire set up of the metaphor conceives of the working class entirely as the victim of history, the object of history, but never as a revolutionary subject. However, because the revolution can only be carried out by the conscious, organized effort of the entire class acting for itself (and not as the obedience of the class to the slogans and demands put forward by revolutionaries), the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle must always be attempting to increase the consciousness and self-confidence and self-reliance of the working class--if workers are unconscious masses to be led by revolutionaries, they can just as easily be led by the bourgeoisie and will never be able to end their exploitation.
The central goal of all intervention in the class struggle then is to contribute to the process whereby the working class becomes a force strong enough, united enough, and conscious enough to overthrow capitalism and build communism internationally. The most important question for each intervention to answer is: how does this increase the consciousness, the self-confidence, and the self-reliance of the working class and increase their belief in their own capacity to struggle together as a class? How does this move toward the working class constituting itself into a force that can overthrow capitalism?
How can revolutionaries be an active part of the growth of the class into such a force?
It is the material interests of the working class push it to struggle against the most fundamental demands of capitalism, and the only way for the struggle to be successful is for them to consciously unite with other workers. This is why the defensive struggles of the working class are inherently revolutionary in the period when the bourgeoisie cannot give an inch but is instead constantly asking for lower wages, longer hours, fewer staff, more insecurity, etc. The role of revolutionaries is to encourage this tendency and speed it along as much as possible and spread the consciousness of this process and encourage the class to take control of its own struggles.
Again from the Communist Organizations and Class Consciousness pamphlet:
"When they (revolutionaries) intervene in the class struggle, they do not put forward a pure abstract theory that the workers are supposed to ‘appropriate' instead of struggling. They are in the struggle. In it, they defend demands, forms of organization (strike committees, genera1 assemblies...). They support everything that can spread and strengthen the struggle. Their task is to intervene and participate - as far as they are able - in all the partial struggles of their class. They must stimulate every tendency for the proletariat to organize itself independently of capital. Revolutionaries will be present in every political and organizational expression of the proletariat, in every struggle, in the general assemblies, soviets, and neighborhood committees. There they will rigorously attack the maneuvers of capital's guard-dogs who will use the cover of ‘working class' language to try to detour the struggle into dead-ends and defeat."
"...as communists, we do not have the task of initiating slogans of daily struggle amongst the working masses - these must be posed by the workers in the factories. We must always point out to the workers that the solution of these daily questions will not better their situation, and that in no way will it be able to bring about the downfall of capitalism. We Communists have the task of participation in this daily combat, of marching at the head of these struggles. Therefore, comrades, we don't reject this daily combat, but in this combat we put ourselves ahead of the masses, we always show them the road and the great goal of communism." (Intervention of Meyer-Bergman (KAPD) at the same congress)
What do revolutionaries do to ensure that class consciousness moves forward?
They participate in every struggle and in its organization, and from beginning to end they use the driving force of each combat to take the greatest possible number of steps towards the constitution of the proletariat as a force capable of overthrowing the dominant system.
"The aim of communist intervention is to contribute to this apprenticeship. In every struggle, communists must show the movement's historical and geographical dimensions, but this does not mean remaining satisfied with setting out the final goal of world-wide communism. We must, moreover, at each instant know how to weigh up the point the struggle has reached, and be able to make proposals which are concretely realisable, and at the same time represent a real advance of the struggle in the development of the unity and awareness of the whole class. To go as far as possible in each struggle, to push its potential capacities to the limit by proposing goals which are realizable but always more advanced - this is what revolutionaries aim, for when they intervene in the open struggles of their class."
Concretely, what does this mean? From "Unions Against the Working Class":
[the revolutionary organization must] "be among the most resolute participants in the struggle, propagating a general orientation for the struggle and denouncing the agents and ideologies of the bourgeoisie within the class. During the struggle it stresses the need for generalization...It is neither a spectator nor a mere water-carrier."
In addition to this, revolutionaries should encourage the appearance of workers' discussion circles and participate in them--not to artificially turn them into transmission belts of parties or thinking that they will become workers' councils--workers' circles can only be valuable if they don't adopt half-formed platforms but instead remain a place open to all workers interested in discussion the problems that face workers as workers..
In regard to the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle, there was consensus that there is:
It was agreed that the objective of the revolutionaries' intervention in the class struggle is:
As one comrade noted, there is a statement by Marx that the revolution is the task of the workers themselves. The organization does not organize the class, does not give orders to the class, as that would contradict the notion that it is the task of the class to make the revolution. It is the responsibility of the revolutionary minority within the class to contribute to the rise of consciousness. The organization is not able to formulate the immediate demands of the class. Indeed it does not have the capacity to do so, and it does not have that function. The dangers of an immediatist approach to our intervention, what to do in our own job, etc. were considered. Sometimes we intervene at locations other than where we work. We have also talked of the need for the working class to draw continuously the lessons of its struggle. We cannot think of intervention as an "individual" thing, but rather as a reflection of the collective struggle of the working class.
Readers will recall that we reprinted in our last issue an earlier article on the Seattle General Strike of 1919, which pointed out the importance of this event in the development of the class struggle in North America, analyzed its strengths and weaknesses and showed how, despite persistent myths of the passivity of the working class in North America, the post-World War I revolutionary wave, which put capitalist social relations into question, did not spare North America.
In this issue, we continue our look at the history of the revolutionary wave in North America with a new article on events north of the 49th parallel, where the working class in Canada launched its own offensive against the capitalist system in a series of struggles across the year 1919, culminating in the Winnipeg General Strike in May and June of that year that would threaten the capitalist social order and would, in the form of spontaneous mass assemblies of workers, prefigure a new social order beyond capitalism.
Winnipeg was a bustling city in the spring of 1919, the largest city in the Canadian West and home to the tallest building in the British Empire at the time. An important transportation hub linking Western and Eastern Canada as well as a route into the United States, Winnipeg stood as an important center of working class life in the western part of the continent. In the spring of 1919, Winnipeg's isolation on the immense northern prairie, where it sits almost 500 miles from the nearest major metropolitan center, did not prevent it from serving as the focal point of a wave of working class struggle that swept Western Canada.
The working class in Winnipeg had to overcome many obstacles in order to come together in the massive struggle it launched that year. Ethnically diverse, with workers coming from Anglo-Scottish, French, Jewish, German, Mennonite, Ukrainian and other heritages, Winnipeg's working class was far from a homogenous. Differences of trade, gender and language further segmented the working class, although the most important fission at the time was probably that between workers who had served on the battlefields of Europe during World War I versus those who had labored in the factories, in the shops and on the railroads at home. The situation was so bad that in January 1919, the ruling class successfully manipulated tensions between the returning war veterans, who faced unemployment and insecurity, and immigrant workers, resulting in anti-immigrant rioting. Returning soldiers marched on a meat packing plant demanding that foreigners be fired from their jobs. The veterans also attacked a socialist memorial meeting for the martyred German revolutionaries, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. For several days immigrants were attacked in the streets and even in their homes.
Try as they might, the bourgeoisie and its state apparatus were unable to use these divisions to keep Winnipeg's working class prostrate as it faced the social and economic turmoil that accompanied the war and its conclusion. Throughout the spring of 1919, Winnipeg's working class demonstrated a tremendous capacity to transcend these various divisions and act in concert as one force in defense of its own class interests. In perhaps one of the most important developments in the Winnipeg struggle, working class veterans who just four months earlier had been suckered into anti-immigrant rioting, overcame the xenophobic bourgeois ideology and threw their support to the general strike. [1] Even rank and file police officers attempted to join the rebellion.
These events occurred in the context of widespread working class support and sympathy for the proletarian revolution in Russia throughout North America in general and in Winnipeg in particular, where for example a mass meeting of 1700 workers, including immigrants and native-born workers, in December 1918 voiced support for and adopted resolutions endorsing the revolutionary struggles in Russia and Germany. The example of the Seattle General strike also stood clearly in the minds of the workers as well. Events in Winnipeg drew further momentum from the Western Labour Conference held in Calgary during March 1919. During this conference, delegates from unions across the West seceded from the Trades and Labour Conference of Canada (TLC) to propose a new organization called One Big Union (OBU), sharing much in common with the principles of revolutionary syndicalism defended by the International Workers of the World (IWW). Many delegates who formed the OBU openly identified with the Russian Revolution and called on the working class to launch a revolution in Canada to overthrow the bourgeois state and create a new society modeled on Soviet Russia. While the OBU itself would prove ephemeral, its formation in March of 1919 led to two main consequences. First, it set the Canadian ruling class back on its feet, leading to the development of a Red Scare in Canada and causing the authorities to react to each working class struggle with a high degree of paranoia and fear. Second, it imbued the working class with a spirit of struggle and created the sense that a new society was indeed possible and that the working class could make it happen.
In May, with the country already gripped by tension, Winnipeg's building and metal workers went out on strike against intransigent employers unwilling to bargain. In response to the building and metal workers' strike, the Winnipeg Trade and Labour Council (WTLC) decided to hold a vote of all affiliated unions on a proposal to declare a general strike. Within a week the votes were in with more than 11,000 workers voting for the general strike compared to just 524 opposed. On May 15, 1919, the factories, shops and rail yards in the city fell silent. The response to the strike was even more impressive than its organizers had expected. Not only did workers in the affiliated unions come out, but thousands of unorganized workers also joined the ranks of the strikers. For the next six weeks, the city's industries would come to a virtual standstill with 30,000 strikers filling the city's streets, parks and halls to protest, voice their demands and plan the direction of the struggle. Following the example of the Seattle General Strike, the strike committee authorized continuation of vital services, demonstrating the embryonic dual power that existed in the city. The strike committee even gave permission for the local theatre to remain open so that workers could have a place to gather during the strike.
Almost from the outset, the radicalism of the Winnipeg working class was evident. The strike spread like wildfire from sector to sector and workers very quickly took the strike into their own hands by spontaneously forming mass assemblies and appointing committees to ensure that the city was fed and essential services were provided. In the mass assemblies workers debated and discussed the goals of the strike, taking matters into their own hands even where this conflicted with the union hierarchies. Displaying tremendous unity in the face of all that on the surface would appear to divide them, the Winnipeg working class consistently rejected the intense ideological barrage and yellow press efforts of the bourgeois newspapers to divide them along the lines of ethnicity, gender or war veteran status. One historian has estimated that at least 171 separate mass meetings of workers took place during the six week course of the strike. [2]
The local ruling class in Winnipeg, as well as the Canadian federal state itself, did not stand idly by, while the working class ran what they considered to be "their" city. In addition to the vicious ideological barrage, which labeled the strikers as "Bolshevist dogs" and "traitors to the Crown", the local bourgeoisie organized itself in the Citizens' Committee of 1000, (CC 1000) with the stated aim of destroying the strike and returning Christian order under the King's government to Winnipeg. Firmly convinced a revolution was underway, the CC 1000 quickly worked to ensure the cooperation of the federal government in crushing the strike. On the 26th of May, the federal government ordered Winnipeg's postal workers back to work or face termination. On advice of a top member of the CC 1000, the federal government passed tough new immigration laws to permit the arrest and deportation of aliens advocating subversion or the destruction of property.
The Winnipeg working class stood strong, rejecting orders to return to work. Returning soldiers sympathetic to the strike held parades in the city, further worrying the authorities. The CC of 1000 and federal authorities held back on deploying violence to crush the strike. Fearful of the consequences of a violent end to the strike, the authorities played a delicate game of wait-and-see, all the time remaining resolute in their call for an end to the strike and the arrest of its leaders. Nevertheless, the authorities were constantly preparing the means of the repression for when the moment came, growing more and more desperate as the stakes became more dire for their social order in Winnipeg and the radicalism of the working class threatened to spread as a series of sympathy strikes broke out in Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and other cities in Western Canada.
However, just as the strikers stood at the height of their power, basically running the city through their mass assemblies and the various committees, the movement began to lose momentum. Contrary to the worst fears of the bourgeoisie, the working class in Winnipeg was unable to pose the question of overthrowing the bourgeois state or put the fundamental nature of capitalist exploitation into question in a conscious way. Although their actions already prefigured these questions similar to the way they had been posed in Russia and Europe in the preceding two years, the Winnipeg working class was unable to bring matters to a revolutionary conclusion. Despite the widespread sympathy for the Russian and German revolutions, the political consciousness of the workers had not assimilated the lessons of the European struggles. The strike committee leaders were all members of either the Socialist Party or the Social Democratic Party of Canada, but their role in the struggle was guided more by their experience as union leaders than by the political lessons of Soviet Russia. The demands of the struggle remained mired at the level of "trade union consciousness," calling for the right to bargain, for a more egalitarian distribution of the fruits of economic development and for a right to be represented in critical decisions about their city and their various industries. In a sense, although their actions already posed the possibility of a different social order, workers' consciousness remained at the level of reformism.
This gap between the workers' actions and their consciousness and the strong role of the unions ultimately gave the bourgeois authorities the time they needed to regain control of the situation. In mid-June, fearing that the loyalty of the city's police force would not hold, the authorities organized a force of special police to crush the strike. However, the special police proved wholly inadequate to the task and a crowd of 15,000 strikers thoroughly routed a force of 1200 special police sent in after an attempt to direct traffic in the downtown area led to a riot. With options running thin, the authorities consented to mobilizing the Royal North West Mounted Police (RNWMP) to crush the strike. On June 21, the RNWMP and special police brutally attacked a parade of returning soldiers, while agents moved to arrest the main strike leaders in Winnipeg and other labor radicals across the country. As a result of the repression, but also under the weight of its own limitations, the strike was officially over by June 26th with a provincial government pledge to investigate its causes.
In drawing a balance sheet of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, one must first salute the radicalism of the working class during those six spring weeks. Time and again, the workers surprised the local bourgeoisie, the federal state and even their own unions in their determination to reject divisions and their capacity to spread the struggle and take over the management of society. While the working class was ultimately unable to pose the question of overthrowing the bourgeois state in a conscious way and the ruling class, through its state, was able to once again gain the upper hand, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 stands as a potent reminder that far from the stereotype of a passive North American working class, workers on this continent have their own radical history of struggle. A history that the working class will need to re-appropriate as it responds to the devastating attacks on its living and working conditions imposed by a global capitalist system in full decomposition.
Henk 06/03/2009
[1] The recent solidarity demonstrated by immigrant and non-immigrant workers at the Lindsey oil refinery struggle in Britain is a modern day reminder of the capacity of workers to overcome xenophobic propaganda aimed at dividing them.
[2] Michael Butt cited in Tom Mitchell and James Naylor "The Prarires in the Eye of the Storm" in Craig Heron, ed. The Workers' Revolt in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) 1997. pg. 187
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/262/environment
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/barack-obama
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/joe-biden
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/green-economy
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1848/mexico
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/drug-violence
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/swine-flu
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/200905/2902/days-discussion-icc-readers-conference-debates-class-struggle
[10] https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/weekend-opinionator-a-different-sort-of-red-america/
[11] https://davidharvey.org/
[12] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/04/the-end-of-capitalism/16734/
[13] https://davidharvey.org/2009/02/why-the-us-stimulus-package-is-bound-to-fail/
[14] https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/anzsog/improving-implementation
[15] https://www.npr.org/2008/12/03/97765976/united-auto-workers-open-to-contract-changes
[16] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010901932.html
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/318/doortostruggles
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/days-discussion
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-consciousness
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/6/iran
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/1919-winnipeg-general-strike