"The war is going badly. Much of the south of the country is out of government control. A scattered, disparate insurgency has gained strength and risks turning into a widespread insurrection against Western forces and the elected government they are backing. In Britain, a sceptical public wonders what its soldiers are dying for. And as the costs and casualties continue to mount, Americans too will ask that question increasingly loudly" (The Economist 22/8/9.)
The fact that such an august publication as the Economist is posing such questions about the Afghan war is clear evidence that the official excuses for this military adventure are wearing very thin.
There were several justifications given for undertaking this war. The first and foremost of these, in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, was that the Taliban government of Afghanistan was supposedly involved in the attacks, or at least was ‘harbouring terrorists' such as Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaida group, who were directly implicated.
The ‘war on terror' - spearheaded by the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and then of Iraq in 2003 - was supposed to eradicate or at least combat terrorism. What has been the reality? The exact opposite - a massive exacerbation of terrorism across the globe. There has been no halt to the mobilisation of ‘radical' Islamist forces within the region. On the contrary, Afghanistan and Iraq have become the focus, the pole of attraction for al-Qaida and similar terrorist gangs.
The knock on effect has also been felt all over the globe - such as the bombings in Madrid in 2004 (Spain, under Jose Luiz Aznar were engaged in fighting in Iraq at that time) and London in 2005.
The Taliban are no longer in government in Afghanistan, but in many ways they have been strengthened: for example they have been instrumental in rallying disparate forces in Pakistan. They are still in control of the opium trade and large areas of Afghanistan. The Taliban use fear and murder to impose their authority in these areas, but there is no doubt that the increasing unpopularity of the government and the NATO occupation is pushing more and more recruits towards them. The growing toll of civilian deaths resulting from air attacks like the one at Kunduz at the beginning of September is certainly increasing this flow of recruits.
Another stated aim was to bring democracy to Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East. Well, little has changed in Afghanistan. In the first place, the Karzai government has next to no control outside the borders of Kabul; indeed, given the number of attacks within Kabul itself, it seems they have less and less control there also. The regional warlords like Abdul Rashid Dostum have not relinquished one iota of control to the Kabul government - in fact they have tightened their grip on their regions, despite attempts to ‘bring them in' to the democratic process.
Secondly, the Karzai government has been marked by outright corruption and brutality - for many Afghans they are no different to those previously in power: "On the campaign trail, President Hamid Karzai has appealed to his enemies to make peace. But his government - inept, corrupt and predatory - does not look like a trustworthy partner. In parts of Afghanistan where insurgents have been driven out and the writ of the government has been restored, residents have sometimes hankered for the warlords, who were less venal and less brutal than Mr Karzai's lot" (The Economist, op cit).
This year has already become the deadliest year in Afghanistan since 2001. As of 25/8/9, 295 foreign troops have been killed there. Part of the reason has been the mini ‘surge' foreign troops have made in order to provide some semblance of ‘stability' so that national elections could take place. This has been a manifest failure. Not only has the surge not undermined the Taliban, but the election was held in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Prior to the recent elections, 10 UK troops died in Babaji district fighting the Taliban, ostensibly preparing the ground for ‘full and free' elections. The result? "Reports that about 150 people voted there, out of an eligible population of 55,000, have not been disputed by officials in Afghanistan" (BBC 27/8/9). And since the elections were held, widespread evidence of vote rigging has come to light.
Related to the attempt to introduce the delights of democracy was the issue of protecting the rights of women in these backward patriarchal societies. Again, reality has been rather different. The new Afghan Constitution adopted 5 years ago promised equality and human rights for women. Since this time the Taliban have been busy closing down schools for girls. For his part, far from protecting women's rights, Karzai has made deals with religious groups and subsequently enacted legislation which effectively legalises rape within marriage.
Meanwhile the war in Afghanistan has more and more spread to Pakistan. The Obama administration has made it clear that it sees Afghanistan and Pakistan as being more strategically important than Iraq. There have been attempts in the media to present the Iraq war as more or less over in order to justify this change in focus, although the recent upsurge in deadly suicide attacks in Iraq have reminded us just how unstable the situation there really is. But in any case, with growing Taliban influence in the areas of Pakistan where the government has virtually no authority, the war there has already escalated, with increasing use of drone bombers by the US and new offensives by the Pakistan government. The latter has resulted in murderous fighting (the army claims to have killed over 1,600 militants) as well as the forcible evacuation of over 2 million people.
As the official justifications for the war become increasingly threadbare, its reality as an imperialist war has become more obvious to more people.
Since the collapse of the old imperialist blocs at the end of the 1980s, the USA has been faced with greater and greater challenges to its position as the ‘world cop'. No one disputes its military strength, indeed no one other power - or combination of half a dozen - is able to compete directly with it in this respect. However, this has not stopped the other powers disputing US domination in various regions of the world. Most notably today we have the rise of China as a gigantic economic entity which has been liberally using the money it has gained from trade to quietly buy its way into areas in which it had no prior interest. There is also the resurgence of Russia; and the US has not ruled out the danger of a challenge to its authority centred on the very heartlands of capitalism - in Europe, around France and above all Germany.
If the USA is to maintain its ‘leadership' in the face of all these challenges, it needs to control the strategically vital areas of the Middle East and Central Asia - vital both for the traditional geo-political reasons that lay behind the imperialist ‘Great Game' in the 19th century, and because of the key energy sources and supply routes they contain (oil and gas). The issue at stake here is imperialist in the widest sense: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not being carried out at the behest of US oil companies hungry for quick profits, but because of the long-term needs of US state capitalism to maintain its waning global domination.
And Britain? When the blocs fell apart, Britain too began to look for a more ‘independent' path, as shown by its willingness to sabotage US efforts during the Balkans war in the 90s. But as a distinctly second rate power ‘independence' is an ever-receding mirage and since 2001 and the ‘War on Terror' in particular the British bourgeoisie has got itself more and more entangled with US military projects in the Middle East and Central Asia. Indeed in Afghanistan it is in the uncomfortable position of serving in the frontline of NATO forces, with its often poorly-equipped troops left exposed to an increasingly confident Taliban insurgency.
As more and more people, not least the families of soldiers serving in Afghanistan, begin to look for the reasons for this war, the ruling class will not abandon its false justifications: Brown, for example, continues to sell the war as a means of preventing terrorist atrocities in London or Glasgow. At the same time we are subjected to diversionary debates like the one about whether or not more money should be spent on buying the latest equipment for the troops, when the real questions are these: why is this society in a constant state of war; and how can we fight against war and the system that spawns it?
Graham 4/9/9.
It's necessary to be suspicious of all the economic statistics produced by the ruling class. However, it is interesting to note the claim that France, Germany and Japan, among some other smaller economies, are no longer in recession. What does this actually mean in practice?
In Japan the economy grew by 0.9% between April and June. This came after 4 consecutive quarters of contraction, so there is still some way to go. A spokesman for Aberdeen Asset Management (Financial Times 18/8/9) suggested that while "other countries have similarly reported better-than-expected economic data, Japan's problems are arguably more entrenched." They think that the main hope for Japan is in exports, "yet rising unemployment and shrinking consumption show no signs of easing" (ibid). In fact unemployment has already reached the highest level ever in Japan's post-war history, and this inevitably has an effect on consumption.
Elsewhere in the same article it quotes another expert: "Japan can export its expertise, but it cannot make things cheaper than hungry developing economies like China and Korea." Competition between the economies of different countries is fundamental. There have recently been many international financial rescue plans put in place - just look at the work of the G20 - but each capitalist entity is still ultimately in competition with each other.
The growth in the Japanese economy has been attributed to the sheer size of the government's stimulus package. Economic commentators are worried about what will happen when it comes to an end. Similarly, with exports being so important then the more Japan is dependent on a revival in the American economy. As things stand most predictions see unemployment staying high and consumer spending low. No one has suggested that the new Japanese government can realistically do anything better.
There are similar doubts about the 0.3% growth in France and Germany between April and June. Government measures are credited with causing improvements, which have yet to occur in the rest of the eurozone, and can't carry on forever. A BBC reporter said "although the surprise news was highly welcome for those that have been suffering, there were questions about how strong and credible the economic recovery is. ‘To draw a medical analogy, we've got the patient waking from a coma and talking to medical staff,' he said. ‘They're not necessarily going to be running any marathons soon'" (13/8/9).
The International Monetary Fund tries to take a global view of the situation. In August its Chief Economist was quite straight about what impact the move out of recession would have: "Growth will not be quite strong enough to reduce unemployment, which is not expected to crest until some time next year." He also indicated that, while he thought a recovery had begun, the recession had "left deep scars, which will affect both supply and demand for many years to come". In predicting that global output could also remain lower he was admitting that the prospect of a return to previous levels of production was in no way imminent.
This ties up with observations in a recent report from the European Commission "Europe is likely to suffer a permanent loss in potential economic output as a result of the global crisis, and government finances will be under pressure for years to come" (Financial Times 2/7/9) "The crisis is the equivalent of capital destruction, reducing - at least for a time - the productive potential of the economy." "Current market disruption in financial markets and the more heavily regulated environment that is likely to follow can also be expected to have a permanent negative effect on potential growth, e.g. through reduced availability of capital for R&D and innovation activities." "Empirical evidence of the effect of past crises shows... that the economy will not return to its pre-crisis expansion path but will shift to a lower one. In other words, the crisis will entail a permanent loss in the level of potential output" (ibid.) The limited nature of any recovery is spelt out in these words from the institutions of our exploiters.
While others were declaring an emergence from recession the UK economy continues to decline. The further 0.8% between April and June was double what economists expected. The annual rate of decline is now 5.6%, the biggest fall since records began in 1955.
The OECD says that British capitalism will be the last of the major economies to come out of recession. The IMF says that any improvement could soon be dashed as Britain might face a ‘double dip' recession.
As unemployment increases it has become normal to predict figures exceeding three million. The Tories have done some research. As an election approaches we should obviously expect them to make sensational claims. Still, when they say that three million have not had a job since Labour came to power in 1997, two million have never had a job and six million are now claiming job seekers' allowance or sickness pay, the only satisfactory response is to point to the others that are also ‘economically inactive' and add further millions to the total.
On top of that there are officially nearly a million people working fewer than 30 hours a week, a figure 38% up on a year ago. This includes people who've only been offered part-time work (regardless of whether they want it) and hundreds of thousands forced to shorten their hours, and therefore their pay, in an attempt to hold on to their jobs.
In addition to that some young workers are so desperate for an income that they're joining the armed forces. The Army, for example is nearing full strength for the first time in a generation. This is partly because of new recruits and partly because the numbers leaving the Army are dropping.
Unlike incoming Labour governments that promise ‘improvements' after their Tory predecessors, David Cameron is promising cuts in public spending, possibly exaggerated by Labour, but definitely significant. Existing government projections for future levels of public expenditure already point to large-scale cutbacks in public services, so the Tories are only showing that they will be in continuity with Labour.
Cameron has already warned workers not to strike against future cuts, but he anticipates future battles. This is not because he is a ‘terrible Tory' but because, as anywhere else in the world, those who play a part in the management of capitalist economies are compelled to attack the living and working standards of the working class. This does not come down to the nature of their personalities but because of the depth of the capitalist crisis.
Car 4/9/9.
Prior to the credit crunch of August 2007, there was already talk of a ‘pensions crisis.' Final salary schemes (paying a guaranteed income on retirement) were being ditched by many employers. The demolition of these schemes has gathered pace.
It's no longer a question of the old schemes being closed to new members - often they are being closed completely, with accrued benefits being frozen. In their place, employers are offering so-called ‘defined contribution' schemes which mean workers build up a ‘pension pot' that can be exchanged for an annuity on reaching retirement age. Workers on these schemes are no longer guaranteed an income when they come to cash in their pension. Instead, the income received depends on the valuation of their pension pot which is largely dependent on the stock market. Cash it in at a time when the market is in free fall and your pension can be practically worthless.
Barclays Bank has already taken the plunge, proposing to close its current staff salary scheme to 18,000 members in favour of a less generous provision. Barclays is not alone. A recent report by Watson Wyatt, a consultancy firm, claims that "half of Britain's companies will close the schemes to existing members, while another 28 per cent will keep their scheme open to existing members but on less generous terms" (Daily Telegraph 17/8/9). These closures will affect over a million workers.
This has profound implications for the future of millions of workers, who will face penury in old age. And this is the perspective facing the ‘lucky ones' who have occupational pensions - over 22% of workers are planning to rely on the state pension in retirement and this number is set to rise to 27% within ten years (Observer 2/8/9).
The bourgeoisie often claim this is because of an ‘ageing population' and due to the ratio of workers to old people going down. On the face of things, this appears to be ‘common sense'. Take, for example, a medieval peasant commune. With agricultural output per person rather limited, the number of producers needed to support the whole population is considerable. If the ratio of producers to consumers falls too low, not enough food would be produced and starvation would ensue.
Of course, capitalists don't like to mention things like starvation. And, in an epoch where overproduction is the real problem facing capitalist society, posing the difficulty in this way is obviously ludicrous. There's a contradiction: we have an abundance of objective resources, expressed in the overproduction of commodities - and yet, we have a lack of wealth, expressed in the terms of money and taxes. To pose the problem another way, we have an abundance of food and yet our pensioners are faced with not being able to afford to eat!
The problem confronting society today, then, is not the same problem that would have faced the hypothetical peasant village we visited earlier. The problem is not one of limited resources, or scarcity. The real problem that faces capitalism is not the production of goods but the production of profit.
In capitalism's eyes, the sole purpose of the worker is to produce surplus value. When this is not possible (in periods of mass unemployment), the worker is surplus to requirements and is cast aside.
Similarly, when workers become too frail to work or are no longer able to adapt to modern production techniques, they are no longer a source of surplus value. They are utterly useless to capital and any resources diverted their way are a drain on capitalism's profits.
When retirement schemes were first introduced, life expectancy was much lower and the number of years of support for the old was quite limited. Often, there was nothing to pay out at all, because most workers would die before reaching retirement age: "in 1908, when Lloyd George bullied through a payment of five shillings a week for poor men who had reached 70, Britons, especially poor ones, were lucky to survive much past 50. By 1935, when America set up its Social Security system, the official pension age was 65-three years beyond the lifespan of the typical American" (Economist 5/6/9).
Today, life expectancy has risen from these low figures. In the UK, life expectancy at birth is now 79.1. The bourgeoisie now has to divert profits to support far more ‘useless mouths' for far longer.
As long as there is sufficient profit to be had, this isn't an insurmountable problem. But the last period of relatively smooth accumulation enjoyed by the profits-system was the post-war boom which came to an end in the late 60s. The re-appearance of crisis has thrown the entire policy of the welfare state into jeopardy. In the 70s, the bourgeoisie attempted to artificially raise consumption and actually increased the value of pensions. But once it realised that the crisis was here to stay, it began to cut back on superfluous expenditure. In the late 80s, the British state began to trim pension costs and reduced the value of state pensions, which have been in decline ever since.
When the credit crunch struck stock markets and other asset classes fell precipitously. This has had a drastic effect on the various pension schemes in Britain. 91% of final salary schemes are now in deficit ie they have insufficient assets to match their liabilities. The total pension deficit in March 09 was £219 billion (Telegraph 10/3/9) or 15% of GDP.
Parallel to this, the budget deficit has exploded as the state has attempted to rein in the worst effects of the crisis. The price for this intervention has been a massive increase in debt. "The combined effect of the financial crisis and recession has been to generate a deficit the likes of which has not been since the aftermath of the Second World War. Britain's total public sector net debt will be catapulted from a level of below 40pc last year to around 80pc or perhaps 100pc and beyond" (Telegraph 11/7/9). And pensions are now being explicitly targeted as part of the debt problem "The ageing of the population, in conjunction with the effect of imprudently generous pensions policies, means Britain's national debt could rise yet further to 200pc of GDP by 2050, according to S&P calculations"(ibid).
Lord Turner, the man behind the plan to raise the pension age to 68 by 2044, is now saying this won't go far enough. He is now suggesting that the pension age be raised to 70 by 2030 (Telegraph 3/7/9).
There is no question that - for capitalism - there is a real problem in supporting old age. But in terms of total expenditure of the economy, overall state expenditure on pensions and other pensioner benefits is only 6% of GDP. And what is the horrific projected figure of the future that is sending the bourgeoisie into palpitations? 6.8% of GDP by 2035, according to the Pensions Policy Institute!
Despite all their efforts to persuade us that the profits system has a future, the bourgeoisie's real assessment is revealed starkly by the growing pensions crisis. In a very general way, the collapse of pensions provision symbolises the way that capitalism is more and more forced to mortgage the future in order to keep the system limping on in the present. It also shows that the potential for meaningful, permanent reforms has long been exhausted. The concessions granted in the post-war boom began to evaporate for the next generation entering work in the 70s. Most workers today face a frightening future ‘retirement': a life of poverty, where even the dreadful perspective of ‘work till you drop' will actually be a luxury for the lucky few in a world of ever-growing mass unemployment. A life punctuated by the misery of ill-health and families bankrupted by the need to provide nursing care for their aging relatives. For millions of families across the world, this future is already here. Over two million pensioners are officially regarded as living in poverty. For the generations that follow, the perspectives are even worse.
Communism offers a different perspective to humanity, one which turns the traditional bourgeois idea of retirement (in reality, brief relief from the exhaustion of wage-labour before you die) on its head. The new society will be an epoch of rest for all, where labour will be desired for the pleasure of the work itself, and where every individual will contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need.
But to reach this new society, the proletariat must first develop its struggles in defence of its interests. Only in this way can it develop its confidence in its strength and the future it has to offer humanity. Massive movements against the brutal attacks on pension provision will prove to be a vital part of this struggle, as was seen in France, Italy and Austria in 2003/4.
Ishamael 25/8/09
July and August saw a number of strikes and proposed strikes in the UK. Railworkers in East Anglia and the East Midlands, airport baggage handlers for Servisair and Swissport, postal workers in many places in the UK, rubbish collectors in Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Edinburgh, bus drivers in South Yorkshire, Wearside and Aberdeen, firefighters in Merseyside and South Yorkshire, tube workers in London, tram drivers in Nottingham, street cleaners in Glasgow and Liverpool, immigration officials, construction workers at various power stations throughout the country, lecturers at London University, teaching staff at colleges in Tower Hamlets and Swansea.
Looking at this extensive list you would think that industrial disputes would be the headline news in the UK. In reality you might struggle to know anything was happening at all. The media have given the strikes little or no publicity and the trade unions have kept disputes under tight control, ensuring that they are kept separate from each other as if each sector of the working class had entirely different interests. The methods of union containment, however, are fairly standard. Unions have held ballots and announced strike dates. Sometimes they have been called off at the eleventh hour or postponed due to ‘positive developments' in negotiations or to allow further negotiations. When the strikes have gone ahead they have been organised so that different workers in different areas of the country are on strike at different times. Strikes are announced for 24 hours or even just 2 hours (Aberdeen bus drivers).
The RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport Union) announced a ‘major victory' to end the London Underground dispute that had led to a 48 hour strike in June. Jobs were now secure, the union announced. A spokesman for Transport for London put a dampener on the RMT's claims. "It is not true that 1,000 jobs have been saved as the RMT claims. We have reduced the number of posts by 1,000. We have not given any guarantees about compulsory redundancies."(BBC 19/8/9).
The current situation is summed up most tellingly by the dispute in the post office. Postal workers have been amongst the most militant workers in recent years, often launching wildcat strikes and defying the so-called ‘anti-union laws' (actually designed to strengthen union control over the workforce). Over the summer the Communication Workers Union has been arranging a number of short term strikes over the issue of pay, conditions but above all job losses. These strikes have been organised on different days in different areas so that it is very hard to see any real dynamic in the strike movement. At the same time the CWU has been balloting for national strike action and has made it very clear that it is opposed to any unofficial action in the meantime - a position made necessary by the outbreak of a number of unofficial disputes up and down the country: for example at Wallasey, Stoke and Dundee. In a number of cases there have been strikes over management attempts to discipline workers, for example in Liverpool Sorting Office after managers tried to dock pay when workers refused to handle mail from Wallasey.
These small expressions of direct solidarity are important. We have seen it in other recent disputes as well: for example, in the strike at Tower Hamlets College, where the whole staff has been out on strike against cuts in staffing in the ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) sector, and where strikers have sent delegations to a number of workplaces in their locality as well as receiving visits from firefighters, teachers and others.
These examples of workers' solidarity and initiative, as well as the sheer number of strikes and the range of sectors involved, shows that despite the attacks that are increasing as a result of the economic crisis, many workers are still prepared to struggle. They are not being paralysed by fear and bullied into accepting ‘realistic' redundancies or pay cuts.
Certainly the vast majority of these actions, even when unofficial, are still taking place inside the trade union framework but this is inevitable given the historic weight of the trade unions in Britain. The growing need for workers to resist the onslaughts of capital, and to unite that resistance across sectional lines, will also compel them to call into question the divisions imposed by the trade unions.
Lif 1/9/9
"Gordon Brown has disappeared at moments of political crisis before..." (The Economist 5/9/9). After the release of al-Megrahi to die in Libya the PM waited 5 days before saying anything and then only to condemn the rapturous welcome he received on landing. Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill was left to take all the flak. Meanwhile more was leaking out about the discussion of the case in high level diplomacy with Libya, including Bill Rammell's assurance that the British government did not want him to die in a Scottish jail. They recognised that it would not be in the national interest, particularly in view of an oil contract. It all seems to be part of the PM's habit of dithering, exhibiting a lack of leadership at critical moments that has dogged the country since he took over in 2007.
Yet at the end of the same article, The Economist, which railed against letting this convicted terrorist go in the previous week, doesn't actually disagree that much with what he did: "Mr Brown has inherited the British-Libyan rapprochement... Even if he was happy for Mr Megrahi to be transferred... it is hard to be sure that the Conservatives would really have put principle over Libya's immense commercial and strategic value..." So what is all this campaign against the Brown government all about? It has certainly been sustained over issue after issue, such as the question of sleaze over MP's expenses. Just as under Major, all the sleaze scandals apply equally to both main parties, but the mud sticks to the government MP's and the opposition comes up smelling of roses and looking statesmanlike!
When he first took over as PM, Brown could do no wrong in the eyes of the media. Then he decided against an autumn election and was immediately labelled a ditherer, hardly fit for any kind of high office. Of course, the end of the sustained ‘growth' fuelled by government spending came to an end, and his legacy as chancellor was shown to be completely hollow, but that was not why the media changed their tune. Once he had taken the decision against an early election it was clear that his job was to see out the government's term and lose the next election, and in order to avoid any mistakes every half excuse is taken up to show the electorate, us, just how inadequate he is to govern. And there have been plenty of fiascos, such as all the ministerial resignations just before the Euro elections, showing a real loss of control within the governing party. The frequent changes of cabinet ministers, like rats leaving a sinking ship, are a definite weakness. But this is not the main reason the ruling class needs a change of government.
It is partly because democracy requires a sufficiently regular change of government to maintain its credibility while continuing to carry out the same basic policies home and abroad. In 1997 Labour's most believable promise, the one they definitely kept, was to follow the tight spending plans of the previous government, cuts and all. But at least they weren't the Tories, the hated Tories who in 18 years presided over a massive increase in unemployment (from one to 3 million until they changed the way of collecting statistics and put millions on incapacity benefit instead of the dole), the rundown of the steel and coal industries complete with the defeat of the miners' strike, cuts in health and so on. After more than a decade of Labour cuts in benefits, attacks on pensions, ‘reform' of health and education to improve ‘efficiency', ie more of the same attacks on the working class, simply not being the Tories won't win another election.
We also need to take account of the recession. With unemployment up to 2.4 million officially we are left in no doubt that worse is to come, even when the recession is technically over. A recent report suggested a cut of 10% of jobs in the NHS, when anyone working in it or using it as a patient might think it has been cut to the bone already. When bringing in all these attacks it will help the government to have an opposition that can pretend to talk in our name, not just as the electorate, but as the working class, to tell us that we should confine our resistance within the bounds of the trade unions and elections. Labour will be able to attempt that in opposition - once they have had a real electoral kicking. The Tories can't.
So what is Brown doing for the bourgeoisie? He's shoring up the banks and keeping the economy afloat with more debt, he's attacking the working class to make us pay for the recession, and last but not least he's the fall guy for the next election.
Alex 5/9/9
The release of al-Megrahi, like the Lockerbie bombing, like his trial, was a matter of high politics for imperialist powers, or - what amounts to much the same thing - low commercial interests for Britain. How could it have been anything else?
While terrorist murders have only increased in the last 21 years, what remains unique about Lockerbie is the rapprochement between Libya and the West following the atrocity. The FBI, with Scottish police as their junior partner, named al-Megrahi and another Libyan intelligence agent as suspects, and more than 10 years and much diplomacy later they were handed over for trial. This, plus payment of compensation for the victims and admission of "responsibility for the actions of its officials" earned Libya improved international relations, lifting of sanctions and immunity from compensation lawsuits.
Allowing for all the legal niceties, his future, the fact that it would be against British national interests if he were specifically excluded from the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, and disastrous for commercial interests if he died in a Scottish jail, were the subject of discussions at diplomatic meetings at the highest level.
For all the condemnation of the decision to release the only man ever convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, there has been no concern shown for the bereaved relatives. Some undoubtedly feel - and have been any number of politicians ready to make political capital out of this - that they have been let down by his release.
The 20th anniversary of the airline bombing last December, as well as the release of al-Megrahi, was the occasion for many reminders of this horrific terrorist attack that killed 270 people, including 11 on the ground. None of this has reminded us of some of the more disturbing background elements, such as the fact that there had been a warning in Helsinki shortly beforehand, and that those in the know were avoiding Pan Am flights, withempty seats being sold dirt cheap.
Nor is the media ever likely to make an analysis of the extent to which terrorism has become a weapon in conflicts between imperialist powers, particularly since the latter decades of the 20th Century. We have only to look at the origins of the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq to draw out some of the clearest examples. During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan the USA and its allies in the western bloc armed the Mujahadin groups, including al-Qaida, and these groups have since returned to haunt them - freedom fighters when on USA and Britain's side, terrorists when they turn against their former masters. Of course states have always used the terror of their military hardware against civilian populations to defend the national interest, particularly since aerial bombing became an essential part of warfare in the Second World War. This has since been repeated in every war, including Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. And they have also been perfectly willing to welcome former terrorists as statesmen, leaders and prime ministers when they become powerful enough: from the ANC in South Africa, Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, to former leaders of the Irgun in Israel...
Today however states are more willing than ever to manipulate shadowy terrorist groups in order to carry out terrorist attacks against the citizens of a rival power. Lockerbie is only one example, attributed to and grudgingly admitted by Libya. But even when terrorist outrages are not directly commissioned by one state in its conflicts with another, the ruling class has no hesitation in making maximum propaganda use of terrorist attacks against its own citizens, even to the point of complicity with the terrorists. There have been strong suspicions that the FSB, the Russian state agency that succeeded the KGB, was involved in the 1999 Moscow bombings, blamed on Chechen terrorists and used to justify Russia's subsequent invasion of Chechnya. Similarly, the 9/11 attacks in the USA provided the pretext for an assault on Afghanistan that had already been planned. Again, there is reason to suspect that the US was prepared to allow al-Qaida considerable leeway in preparing some kind of attack on American soil.
For our rulers, terror, terrorism and campaigns denouncing mass murder are a question of pragmatism and hypocrisy, not principle.
Alex 5/9/9
Since the collapse of the Stalinist regimes andthe eastern bloc, the organisations of official anarchism have prided themselveson keeping their hands clean in the confrontation of the east and western blocsfrom 1945 to 1989 and fostered the legend of an unshakeable opposition to themilitary blocs: "The anarchists vary on the problems of the blocs. Themajority decided to oppose both east and west..."[1].
In reality, during the Cold War after1945, some of the anarchist organisations officially took a position in favourof the defence of the ‘free world', such as the SAC (Sveriges ArbetaresCentralorganisation) in Sweden. At the time of the direct confrontation betweenthe armed forces of the eastern bloc and the American and UNO forces in Korea,1950-53, some, like members of the Révolution Prolétarienne group, in the nameof choosing the ‘lesser evil' and the defence of democracy, took an openlypro-American position. This was the case with A. Prudommeaux, N. Lazarevitch,and G. Leval but also of Spanish and Bulgarian militants: "There are twoimperialisms but I know of one that's particularly dangerous and totalitarianwith slavery as the key. The other is a lesser danger... I am not for thewithdrawal of American troops from Korea... In Korea, I only see one warcriminal and that is Stalin. He is directly responsible for the strategicbombardments that are decimating the Korean population..."[2] Conversely, others brandedAmerican imperialism as the principal warmonger.
For those anarchists, such as the FédérationAnarchiste, who said they rejected all the camps involved and had the slogan "againstStalin, without being for Truman, against Truman without being for Stalin",they didn't at all act like internationalists and they didn't escape the logicof choosing one imperialist camp against the other. Thus, when the USSRlaunched itself into the arms race to keep up with the Americans, the ‘combatfor the 3rd front' "led the FA to denounce German rearmament by supportingthe pacifists of this country and participating in the ‘Ridgeway[3]Go Home' campaign[4]"animated by the PCF. Through the critical endorsement that it gave to thiscampaign, the FA acted as a tail-end to the PCF; it fulfilled the function ofrallying workers behind the PCF and into the unconditional defence of theRussian imperialist bloc!
On the other hand, provocative protestactions played the same role in touting for bourgeois state institutions: the‘really anti-imperialist' struggle of the ‘3rd revolutionary front' put forwardby the FA was concretised at the time of the legislative elections of 1951 "infavour of voting lists being drawn up: No eastern dictatorship, no westerndictatorship, I want peace"[5], or else by undertakingspectacular stunts, such as the trespass in 1952 "in the great room of thePalais de Chaillot where a plenary session of the UN was taking place. A number of leafletsentitled ‘3rd Front, Down with War' was thrown into the room and the Americanand Russian delegates were met with inoffensive projectiles."[6]
Far from helping the working class tostrengthen itself politically, this type of action, while seemingly innocuous,serves to maintain the illusion in the working class that such methods could bea step towards the revolutionary confrontation. On the contrary, it onlyreinforces the submission of the working class to democratic mystifications.
Meanwhile the Fédération CommunisteLibertaire presented candidates to the legislative elections of 1956! At thetime of the liquidation of the 4th Republic and the summons of De Gaulle topower in 1958 in order to settle the colonial problem, "there was agreementin all the appeals in the libertarian press to save the threatened Republic(...) The great majority of anarchists chose the Republic and the politics ofthe lesser evil..."[7] In April 1961, faced withthe putsch in Algiers by generals who opposed Algerian independence, "the FAparticipated in different committees regrouping several organisations of theleft (...) the anarchists were among the first to defend democratic liberties,and this despite subsequent denials."[8]
Above all, the constant support given toso-called national liberation struggles concretised the choice of oneimperialist camp against another. In the words of the FA: "Anarchists demandfor the overseas population the right to liberty, to work in independence, theright of their own destiny outside of the rivalries now tearing the worldapart; they assure them of their solidarity in the struggle that they mustundertake against the oppression of all the imperialisms..."[9] The anarchists thus tooktheir place among the best servants of the mystification of the right of peopleto self-determination. They found themselves in unison with the officialideology of each of the blocs, as much the Zhdanov doctrine of the eastern blocwhich affirmed itself as "the real defender of liberty and independence ofall nations, an adversary of national oppression and colonial exploitation inall its forms"[10], as well as the Americandoctrine that stipulated "in these key zones everything must be done toencourage democratic forms and access to their independence". Thesetheories were developed so that one bloc could militarily destabilise the otherin the merciless imperialist wars between the Soviet and Western blocs.
Thus, the French anarchistsmisrepresented the war in Indo-China as a "revolutionary episode" (FA in1952) where one could see a "class war" (FCL in 1954) and proclaimed thelegitimacy of "the struggle of the Indochinese proletariat" and thenecessity for "workers' solidarity with the Viet-Minh".
This political support for nationalliberation struggles even went as far as physical involvement. During the warin Algeria, numerous libertarians joined the ‘bag carriers', the network ofsupport for the FLN[11]. "The position ofcritical support in favour of a socialist and self-managed Algeria" of theFCL in the name of solidarity "with oppressed peoples, against imperialism"was concretised in material, active support to the Algerian nationalist partiesof the MNA, then of the FLN when the latter became all-powerful after 1956. "TheMaquis of the ALN (Army of National Liberation) divide themselves upbetween the two authorities. We know this because we have amongst us, in theFCL, Algerian comrades of the FLN tendency; but we have provided services tothe MNA maquis by playing the role of intermediaries in order to obtain‘supplies' (ie, arms) for their combatants."[12]
These positions of the anarchists infavour of national liberation struggles, however critical, directly served toensure the submission of the masses to imperialism. Anarchism bears a heavypart of the responsibility for subjecting the proletariat and the exploitedclasses to the barbarity of the military conflicts that have covered the planetwith blood. A prisoner of the logic of establishing a distinction between thedifferent imperialist gangsters (in the name of the rights of the weakest) isthe common trait of the whole thieves' kitchen of official anarchism and itdirectly turned anarchists into recruiting agents for imperialist war. Decadesof spreading these mystifications, to which anarchists had systematically contributed,greatly delayed the proletariat from emerging from the counter-revolutionfighting for its own objectives.
In fact, the official anarchist currentsthat dominated the anarchist movement after the Second World War up until theend of the counter-revolution, and even afterwards, helped to sterilise thegrowing reflection about the ‘communist' reality of the Stalinist regimes.These currents made use of a sentiment of revulsion towards the hideous lieabout ‘communism' in the eastern countries, and turned it towards ideas like anti-militarismand pacifism. Instead of contributing to the development of a historicalunderstanding of class relations, these currents encouraged the development ofindividualist, activist and immediatist responses. Many of those who rejectedthe Stalinist ‘model' were thus steered towards the defence of democracy, andthus towards the defence of the other imperialist camp.
However, after 1968, with the end of thecounter-revolution and the return of the proletariat to the scene of history,we saw the reappearance of a phenomenon that had already been seen in otherhistorical moments: politicised elements who were really trying to find arevolutionary direction on the basis of anarchism
The development in the United States andthe western countries of the student revolts of the 60s, taking as their keytheme the opposition to the US war in Vietnam, indicated that the ideologicalweight of Stalinism was beginning to crack. In fact the official Stalinistparties had little influence on these movements when they denounced USintervention in Vietnam against the military forces supported by the so-calledanti-capitalist Soviet bloc. Above all, the lie of a ‘communist andrevolutionary' Stalinism broke up with the outbreak of struggle of a newgeneration of young workers in the general strike of 1968 in France and thenvarious massive working class movements throughout the world. It was the end ofthe counter-revolution and the idea of a communist revolution was back on theagenda.
Through their anti-Stalinism, theanarchist organisations, especially after the repression of the movement inHungary 1956, exercised a certain attraction, essentially among students. Whilethey strengthened themselves numerically, the old existing organisations didnot really satisfy the new generation, who saw them as sclerotic. The whole ofthe milieu recomposed itself.[13]
In the heat of the resurgentinternational class struggle, there were within the anarchist milieu minoritiesand elements looking for class positions, and trying to obtain a revolutionarycoherence from anarchism. Thus a part of the new, libertarian milieu opened upto organisations that had developed certain class positions (Socialisme ouBarbarie), or even to the proletarian political milieu, in particular itsorganised councilist pole, embodied in Informations et CorrespondancesOuvrieres. In this way, the group Noir et Rouge for example, demarcated itselffrom the FA and, recognising "the primacy of the class struggle",proposed "bringing anarchism up to date and an adaptation of anarchistprinciples." The group affirmed the necessity for debate and defended "contactwith other comrades who do not necessarily claim to be anarchist". Itdenounced the kind of sanctification of the "Spanish revolution" that "forbadeall criticism".[14] In its quest for genuinelyworking class forms of struggle, the group turned towards the politicalcontribution of the German-Dutch communist left and of Pannekoek. Itparticipated in the international meeting organised by ICO in Brussels in 1969along with Paul Mattick, an old militant of the German Communist Left andémigré to the United States, and Cajo Brendel, the animator of the Dutchcouncilist group Daad en Gedacht.
This decantation of the anarchist milieuaround the methods of proletarian class struggle was politically veryimportant, but it was limited in its scope. In effect, since this decantationtook place around the organised councilist pole of the proletarian milieu,which weakened and disappeared in the 1970s, the group Noir et Rouge wasdragged into this shipwreck and dissolved itself in the crush, bringing aboutan important waste of militant energies. The general context of the period,with its widespread illusions in the possibility for the capitalist system tofind its way out of its economic crisis, as well as the difficulties of theproletariat in politicising its combat, in affirming the perspective ofrevolution, was exploited to the hilt by leftists of all types in order toblock any emerging revolutionary consciousness.
However, a small part of these newelements coming from anarchism did trace out a path towards a new proletarianpolitical milieu that had been reborn with the return of the proletariat ontothe scene of history.
Scott 31/8/9.
see also
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 1): Anarchists faced with the First World War [12]
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 2): Anarchist participation in the Second World War [13]
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 4): Internationalism, a crucial question in today's debates [14]
[1] Afterwordby M. Zemliak to the book of Max Nettlau, History of Anarchy, Artefact,p.279.
[2] Letter ofS. Ninn 24.08.50, cited by G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme (The OtherCommunism), Acritie, p.134.
[3] When the Commander-in-Chief of NATO forces, Ridgeway, cameto France in May 1952, the French Communist Party led its troops in fighting inthe streets against formidable police forces, resulting in one worker's deathand 17 wounded.
[4] G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme, p.149.
[5] G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme, p.134.
[6] G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme, p.149.
[7] Sylvain Boulouque, The French anarchists faced withcolonial war (1945-1962), Atelier de Creation Libertaire, p.61.
[8] Ibid, p.65.
[9] Resolution of the Congress of the FA, October 1945, onincrevablesanarchistes.org.
[10] Joukov, Crisis and the colonial system, Moscow, 1949.
[11] As Alternative Libertaire claimed: "One very oftenforgets that the network of ‘bag carriers' who supported Algerian independenceduring the war didn't begin their existence in 1957 with the action of P.Jeanson, then H. Curiel. After the Toussaint insurrection in 1954 in fact, theonly organisations supporting Algerian independence were situated on theextreme left - the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI-Trotksyist) and theFCL. In Algeria itself, the Mouvement Libertaire Nord-Africain (MLNA), linkedto the FCL, joined the struggle against the French state, for the independenceof the country, from Toussaient 1954. The French police liquidated the MLNAthen the FCL between 1956 and 1957. The libertarians nevertheless pursued thestruggle against colonialism within the Groupes Anarchistes d'ActionRévolutionnaires (GAAR) or, for the survivors of the FCL, within the VoieCommuniste."
[12] G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme, p.209.
[13] For example, in 1965, in Italy, the Anarchist InitiativeGroups left the FAI: the youth of the north of Italy detached themselves fromthe FAGI to constitute the Federated Anarchist Groups. In France,l'Organisation Révolutionanaire Anarchiste separated from the FA in 1970 inorder to approach extreme left, non-libertarian organisations. It later becamel'Organisation Communiste Libertaire.
[14] Quotes in Cedric Guerin, Pensee et action de anarchists enFrance: 1950-1970, raforum.apinc.org.
One of the most significant outbreaks of class struggle in South Korea for many years, the occupation of the Ssangyong car plant in Pyeongtaek near Seoul, ended at the beginning of August.
Having held the factory for 77 days in the face of siege conditions where they were denied food, water, gas and electricity, and had to resist repeated onslaughts by the police backed by a small army of company goons and strikebreakers, the workers were compelled to abandon the occupation with many of their key demands unmet, and were immediately subjected to a wave of repression in the form of arrests, interrogations and possible crippling fines.
The South Korean economy never really recovered from the crash-landing of the ‘Tigers and Dragon' in 1997 - a precursor of today's ‘credit crunch'. With the global car industry in deep trouble, the Ssangyong Motor Company, which is now controlled by a Chinese motor conglomerate, has been gradually reducing the workforce and came up with a plan to offer the plant as collateral in order to secure the loans it needed to emerge from bankruptcy. This plan involved many more lay-offs - 1700 workers forced into early retirement and the firing of 300 casual workers - and a transfer of technology to China with the eventual aim of wholesale outsourcing to the cheaper labour markets available in Korea's powerful neighbour.
The strike and plant occupation, which began in earnest on 22 May, raised the demand for no lay-offs, no casualisation and no outsourcing. Throughout the occupation, the thousand or so workers holding the plant have shown exemplary courage and ingenuity in defending themselves against police forces equipped with helicopters, tear gas, stun guns and other military hardware. This resistance required not only the making of improvised weapons (metal pipes, molotovs, slingshots) but also planning and tactical sense - for example, they responded to overwhelming force by retreating to the paint department, calculating (correctly) that the flammable materials there would dissuade the police from using tear gas canisters, especially in the wake of a recent tragedy in Seoul when five people died in a fire set off during a clash with the police.
These activities required initiative and self-organisation. It appears that the workers were organised into 50 or 60 groups with ten members each, each of these groups electing a delegate to coordinate action.
The occupation also inspired solidarity actions from other workers, many of whom face the same uncertain future. Workers from the nearby Kia automobile plant were particularly active, with hundreds of workers coming to the factory to defend it against concerted police attack. Attempts to reach the factory gates and provide food and supplies to the occupiers were met with the same brutal violence as that doled out to the workers inside. There is no doubt that the occupation had considerable support throughout the Korean working class - a fact reflected in the national trade union federation, the KCTU, calling a two day general strike and a national solidarity rally in late July.
But although some of the original measures proposed by the bosses were rescinded at the end of the strike, the occupation ended in defeat. Workers emerged from the occupation battered and bruised, some seriously injured, and with a small spate of suicides among employees or their families.
"In the final negotiations, the local union president agreed to early retirement (i.e. layoff with severance pay) for 52% of the occupiers, with 48% furlough for one year without pay, after which they will be rehired, economic conditions permitting. The company will also pay a 550,000 won monthly subsidy for one year to some workers transferred to sales positions.
In the ensuing days, insult was piled on injury with detention and pending indictments of scores of workers, and a 500,000,000 won ($45,000,000 US) lawsuit by the company against the KMWU. As indicated, further individual lawsuits, possible under Korean labor law which have left striking workers destitute in the past, may follow. The company claims 316 billion won ($258.6 million) damages and about 14,600 vehicles in lost production due to the strike"[1].
What this defeat demonstrates above all is that no matter how well you organise to defend an occupied factory, if the struggle doesn't spread, it will be ground down in the vast majority of cases. The central need of any group of workers faced with redundancies is to go to other workers, other plants and offices, and explain the necessity for common action, so as to build up a balance of forces that can compel the bosses and the state to step back. The active solidarity shown by the Kia and other workers outside the factory gates shows that this is not utopian, but the emphasis needs to be on extension rather than simply resisting police attacks on an occupied plant, however necessary the latter may be. Workers reflecting on this defeat have to pose the question: why weren't these real expressions of solidarity translated into a direct extension of the struggle, to Kia and other workplaces? More than this: those militant minorities who find themselves questioning the strategy of the unions need to get together in groups or committees in order to push for the extension and independent organisation of the struggle.
For us, the key here is that the problem of extension was taken in hand by the unions, whose ‘general strikes' were part of a well-worn ritual - symbolic actions that were not at all aimed at mobilising large numbers of workers even to demonstrate support for the Ssangyong occupation, let alone widen the struggle with their own demands. Within the plant, the union (the KMWU) seems to have maintained an overall control of the situation. Loren Goldner, who was in Korea when the struggle began and paid a visit to the plant, recounts his discussion with one worker participating in the occupation:"I spoke to one activist participating in the occupation and critical of the role of the union. In his view, the KMWU remained in control of the strike. However, in contrast to role of the unions in the Visteon struggle in the UK and in the dismantling of the US auto industry, the KMWU supported the illegal actions of seizing the plant and preparing for its armed defense. On the other hand, in negotiations with the company, it concentrated on the demand for no layoffs and soft-pedaled the demands for job security for all and against out-sourcing".
The extension of the struggle cannot be left in the hand of the trade unions - it can only be effectively carried out by the workers themselves. When the unions support illegal actions and when their local representatives participate in a struggle, it does not prove that the unions can sometimes be on the side of the struggle. At best it shows that lower union officials, as in the case of the KMWU local president, are often also workers and can still act as workers; but at worst it serves to maintain the illusion that unions, at least on the local level, are still fighting organisations of the proletariat.
Goldner draws the following conclusions from the defeat:
"The Ssangyong defeat cannot be attributed merely to the lame role of the KMWU national organization, which from the beginning allowed the negotiations to be channeled in a narrow focus on ‘no layoffs'...Nor can the defeat be fully explained by the atmosphere of economic crisis. Both of these factors undoubtedly played a major role. But above and beyond their undeniable impact, it is the year-in, year-out rollback of the Korean working class, above all through casualisation, which now affects more than 50% of the work force. Thousands of workers from nearby plant did repeatedly aid the Ssangyong strike, but it was not enough. The defeat of the Ssangyong strikers, despite their heroism and tenacity, will only deepen the reigning demoralization until a strategy is developed that can mobilize sufficiently broad layers of support, not merely to fight these defensive battles but to go on the offensive".
We would certainly agree that the atmosphere of economic crisis can and does have a paralysing effect for many workers, who can see that the strike weapon is often ineffective when the plant is closing anyway, and who have seen so many occupations against closures being strangled after a lengthy siege. The process of casualisation also plays a part in atomising the workforce, although we don't think it is the decisive factor and certainly does not only apply to Korea. In any case, it is itself an aspect of the crisis, one of the many measures the bosses use to reduce labour costs and disperse resistance.
Ultimately, Goldner is right to say that the workers will have to go on the offensive - ie, launch into mass strikes that take on the goal of overthrowing capitalism - but it is precisely the dawning realisation of the magnitude of the task that, in an initial period, can also make workers hesitate to engage in any struggle at all.
One thing is certain: the passage from defensive to offensive struggles cannot be posed in Korea alone. It can only be the result of an international maturation of class struggle, and in this sense, the defeat at Ssangyong, and the lessons to be drawn from it, can make a real contribution to this process.
Amos 1/9/9.
[1] From the detailed balance sheet of the strike written by Loren Goldner on libcom.org.
On 20 July, a couple of dozen young workers at the Vestas wind-turbine factory on the Isle of Wight occupied their factory after the management had decided to close it with the loss of over 500 jobs, with about another hundred going on the mainland.
This action occurred outside the framework of a trade union; indeed the mainly young workforce were for the most part not in a union. By their action they demonstrated combativity and a degree of self-organisation that is a characteristic of workers facing factory closures and unemployment.
Some three weeks after the occupation was started, the fight was lost. This was in the face of a combination of trade unionists, leftists and environmentalists - all using the actions of this relatively naive workforce for their own agendas and ends.
For the company, producing these particular turbines is unprofitable in Britain; therefore, through the logic of capitalism, the factory has to close. Ed Milliband, Secretary of State for climate change and energy, was clear about Vestas: if they can't make a profit then they close. Obviously, such considerations don't apply to industries essential to the war economy, BAe for example, which continue to receive massive state subsidies.
At the announcement of the Vestas closure, all sorts of activists descended on the Isle of Wight. Whatever their subjective intentions, the majority contributed to the isolation of the struggle and its incorporation into campaigns about nationalisation and climate change.
Workers were worried about their jobs and also about the state of the planet. The activist invasion, full of self-appointed ‘organisers' of workers, could only undermine the potential of the struggle. Calls for nationalisation amount to asking for one boss to be replaced by another. The idea that capitalism can be reformed so that the very real threat to the planet could be removed is laughable. Protests at Peter Mandelson's house got publicity but didn't advance the struggle an inch. On the contrary such stunts detracted from the potential of the struggle to extend to other workers.
That's not to dismiss everyone who went to the Vestas plant. There were genuine expressions of solidarity from individuals and other workers going to the plant. Jason Cortez, a Solidarity Federation member who writes on Libcom, was one, and some of his observations were very useful for grasping what went on inside and outside the factory.
But it wasn't just the left-wing and green activists that sabotaged this fight: the RMT trade union also parachuted in its troops, initially in an inter-union dispute with Unite (that had some minimal influence in the factory) and then to try and take over the struggle and use it in publicity for an RMT recruitment drive.
Jason Cortez talked of the union, after initially seeming to impulse the fight, taking over inside the factory, first of all restricting meetings to the workers and union officials and excluding family, the community and other elements expressing solidarity. In this way it cut off a wider discussion that had to confront the need to go to other workers. He noted that the factory next door, itself threatened with closure, an obvious target for solidarity, was largely ignored.
At the ignominious end of the strike, the RMT union arranged a ‘tour' of the mainland, dragging selected strikers and their families around the country for more publicity for the union as well as generalising the ‘green' campaigns of the bourgeoisie; the trade union and green circuses combined under one Big Top. These youngsters started a struggle that was hijacked more or less from the beginning and ended up with some of the workers acting as pawns in a union recruitment campaign.
As for the question of the environment, the government's claim to be creating half-a-million green jobs is a lie. The sum they have put up for investment in the offshore wind manufacturing industry is £180 million, with the usual large chunk going in consultancies. Some capitalists will make money and employ some workers within this industry. But even in the most optimistic scenario, both for Milliband's plans (like Obama's in the US), ‘green' jobs will not even begin to replace the millions of jobs that are gone and going. These new jobs will be a drop in the ocean and will not contribute to the alleviation of working class conditions which can only worsen. This industry needs massive investment, most of which is not forthcoming; and where it is, the state capitalist measures needed to promote green technology, the subsidies involved, will be paid for by higher prices and higher taxes - further attacks on workers living standards.
While the Vestas struggle is over the campaigns of the leftists continue. For example, Socialist Worker (5/9/9) says that "One Sky TV report on the Vestas occupation said, ‘There is a real fear in some quarters that occupations like Vestas are becoming a new form of industrial relations.'" If workers' struggles are stuck in individual plants then the ruling class has nothing to fear. In the struggle against closures workers will often start their fight by occupying their workplace. This can be an excellent basis for a struggle, as a place for holding meetings and as a springboard for the extension of the struggles to other workers.
The ‘day of action' planned by political parties, green campaigners, trade union and other activists for 17 September looks like it could be a celebration of the isolation and defeat of the Vestas workers, when their initial struggle showed workers' self-organisation against the attacks of the capitalist class.
B&C 4/9/9
At the end of May, the ICC held its 18th international congress. As we have always done, and as is the tradition in the workers' movement, we are presenting readers with the main elements of this congress, since they are not just internal matters but concern the working class as a whole. A fuller version of this report can be found on our website and in International Review [22] 138.
The resolution on the ICC's activities adopted by the congress says:
"The acceleration of the historic situation, unprecedented in the history of the workers' movement, is characterised by the conjunction of the two following aspects:
· the extension of the most serious open economic crisis in the history of capitalism, combined with the exacerbation of inter-imperialist tensions and, since 2003, a slow but progressive advance in the depth and extension of maturation within the working class;
· and the development of an internationalist milieu, which is particularly obvious in the countries at the periphery of capitalism.
This acceleration takes the political responsibility of the ICC to a new level, making the highest demands in terms of theoretical/political analysis and intervention in the class struggle, and work towards the searching elements."
The balance sheet that we can draw from the 18th international congress of our organisation must therefore be based on its capacity to live up to these responsibilities.
For a really serious communist organisation, it is always a delicate thing to proclaim that this or that aspect of its activities have been a success. For several reasons.
In the first place, because the capacity of an organisation that struggles for the communist revolution to be up to its responsibilities can't be judged in the short term but only in the long term. Its role, while always anchored in the historical reality of its day, for the most part consists not so much of influencing this immediate reality, at least not on a large scale, but of preparing for the events of the future.
In the second place, because for the members of such an organisation there is always the danger of painting too rosy a picture, or being excessively indulgent towards the weakness of a collective body to which they have devoted so much energy and which they have the permanent duty of defending from the attacks levelled at it by all the defenders of capitalist society, open or disguised.
Conscious of the danger of these kinds of illusions, and with the prudence that necessarily goes along with this, we can still affirm without fear that the 18th Congress of the ICC was indeed up to the responsibilities announced above, and created the conditions for us to continue in the right direction.
We can't go into all the reasons supporting this affirmation here. We will only underline the most important ones:
Our press has already given an account of the integration of the new ICC sections in the Philippines and Turkey (the responsibility of the congress was to validate the decision to integrate them taken by our central organ at the beginning of 2009)[1]. As we wrote then: "The integration of these two new sections into our organisation thus considerably broadens the ICC's geographical extension." We also made two points about these integrations:
The integration of two new sections is not something that happens frequently for our organisation. The last integration of a new section took place in 1995 with the section in Switzerland. This is why the arrival of these two sections (which took place shortly after the constitution of a nucleus in Brazil in 2007) was felt to be very important and positive by all the militants of the ICC. It confirms both the analysis our organisation has been putting forward for several years with regard to the potential contained in the development of class consciousness in the current historic situation, and the validity of the policies we have adopted towards the groups and elements moving towards revolutionary positions. And this was all the more the case in that delegations from four groups of the internationalist milieu were present at the congress.
In the balance sheet we drew up for our previous international congress, we underlined the importance of the presence, for the first time in decades, of four groups from the internationalist milieu, from Brazil, Korea, the Philippines and Turkey. This time again there were also four groups present. But this wasn't a simple rerun since two of the groups who had been at the previous congress have since become sections of the ICC, and we now had the pleasure of welcoming two new groups: a second group from Korea and a group from Central America (Nicaragua and Costa Rica), the LECO (Liga por la Emancipacion de la Clase Obrera), which had taken part at the ‘meeting of internationalist communists' in Latin America, called on the initiative of the ICC and the OPOP, the internationalist group from Brazil with whom we have maintained fraternal and very positive relations for a number of years[2]. This group was again present at our congress. Other groups who took part in the meeting in Latin America were also invited to our congress but were not able to send delegates because Europe is now more and more becoming a fortress against people not born in the very narrow circle of the ‘rich countries'.
The presence of groups of the internationalist milieu was a very important element in the success of the congress and in particular in the ambience in which the discussions took place. These comrades showed a good deal of warmth towards the militants of our organisation and raised a number of questions, notably with regard to the economic crisis, in ways which we are not so familiar with in our own debates, something which could only help to stimulate reflection within our organisation.
Finally, the presence of these comrades was an added element in the whole process of opening out which the ICC has taken up as one of its key objectives over the last few years - opening both towards other proletarian groups and towards individual elements moving towards communist positions. In particular, when you have people from outside the organisation present at a meeting, it is very difficult to fall into the trap of reassuring ourselves with nice stories. This opening out also manifests itself in our reflections and preoccupations, notably with regard to research and discovery in the realm of science[3]. This was made concrete by the fact that a member of the scientific community was invited to one of the sessions of the congress.
To celebrate ‘Darwin Year' in our own way, and to give voice to the development within the ICC of a growing interest in scientific questions, we asked a researcher who specialises in the evolution of language (the author of a book entitled Why we talk: the evolutionary origins of language, published by OUP) to make a presentation of his work to the congress, which are obviously based on a Darwinian approach. The original reflections of Jean-Louis Desalles[4] on language, its role in the development of social ties and of solidarity in the human species are connected to the discussions we have been having in the ICC, and which are still going on, on the subject of ethics and the culture of debate. The presentation by this researcher was followed by a debate which we had to limit in time because of the constraints of the agenda, but which could have gone on for hours since the questions raised evoked a passionate interest on the part of the comrades present.
We would like to thank Jean-Louis Dessalles who, while not sharing our political ideas, very cordially agreed to give up some of his time to enriching reflection inside our organisation. We also want to welcome the very warm and convivial responses which he made to the questions and objections raised by ICC militants.
The work of the congress examined the classic points always treated by our international congresses:
The resolution on the international situation which we are publishing in this issue of the International Review is a sort of synthesis of the discussions at the congress about the present state of the world. Obviously it cannot take into account all the aspects looked at in these discussions (either at the congress or in the preparatory reports). It has three main aims:
On the first aspect, understanding what's at stake in the present crisis of capitalism, we need to underline the following aspects:
"The present crisis is the most serious the system has been through since the great depression which began in 1929...Thus, it is not the financial crisis which is at the origin of the current recession. On the contrary, the financial crisis merely illustrates the fact that the flight into debt, which made it possible to overcome overproduction, could not carry on indefinitely... In reality, even though the capitalist system is not going to collapse like pack of cards, the perspective is one of sinking deeper and deeper into a historical impasse, of plunging more and more into the convulsions that affect it today".
Regarding the ‘new element' provided by the election of Obama, the resolution replies very clearly that:
"the perspective facing the planet after the election of Obama to the head of the world's leading power is not fundamentally different to the situation which has prevailed up till now: continuing confrontations between powers of the first or second order, continuation of barbaric wars with ever more tragic consequences (famines, epidemics, massive displacements) for the populations living in the disputed areas".
Finally, with regards to the perspective for the class struggle, the resolution, like the debates at the congress, tried to evaluate the impact of the brutal aggravation of the crisis:
"The considerable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism today obviously represents a very important element in the development of workers' struggles... Thus the conditions are maturing for the idea of overthrowing this system to develop on a significant scale within the proletariat. However, it is not enough for the working class to perceive that the capitalist system is at a dead-end, that it has to give way to another society, for it to be able to take up a revolutionary perspective. It also needs to have the conviction that such a perspective is possible and that it has the strength to carry it out...For consciousness of the possibility of the communist revolution to gain a significant echo within the working class, the latter has to gain confidence in its own strength, and this takes place through the development of massive struggles. The huge attacks which it is now facing on an international scale provides the objective basis for such struggles".
Concerning the activities and life of the organisation, the congress drew up a positive balance sheet for the preceding period despite a number of weaknesses:
"The balance sheet of the last two years' activities shows the political vitality of the ICC, its capacity to be in phase with the historic situation, to be open and to be an active factor in the development of class consciousness, its will to involve itself in initiatives for common work with other revolutionaries... On the level of the organisation's internal life the balance sheet of the activities is also positive, despite the real difficulties which exist mainly at the organisational level and, to a lesser extent, on the level of centralisation" (Resolution on activities).
It is with the aim of overcoming these difficulties that the congress discussed a more general text on the question of centralisation. This discussion, while being useful to the ‘old guard' of our organisation in reaffirming the communist conception of this question and making it more precise, was particularly important for the new comrades and sections which have recently joined the ICC.
One of the significant aspects of the 18th congress was the presence, noted by the ‘old' comrades with a certain surprise, of a number of ‘new faces', among which the younger generation was particularly well represented.
The presence of a good number of young people at the congress was a factor making for dynamism and enthusiasm. Contrary to the bourgeois media, the ICC does not indulge in a the cult of youth, but the arrival of a new generation to our organisation - along with the fact that most of the delegates from the other participating groups were also young - is extremely important for the perspective of the proletarian revolution. Like icebergs, they are the emerging tip of a deep process of developing consciousness inside the world working class. At the same time this makes it possible for bringing reinforcements to the existing communist forces.
Even if the ‘old' militants of the ICC retain all their commitment and dedication, it's this new generation which will be called upon to make a decisive contribution to the revolutionary struggles of the future.
ICC 12/7/9.
[1] See "Welcome to the new ICC sections in Philippines and Turkey", ICC online and World Revolution 322.
[2] See the article about this meeting on our website and in World Revolution 324.
[3] As we have already shown in the various articles we have published online recently on Darwin and Darwinism.
[4] The reader who wants to get a better idea of his work can refer to his website https://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/jld/ [23]
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/afghanistan
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/afghanistan
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/unemployment
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/pensions
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/lockerbie-bombing
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/829/libya
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/al-megrahi
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/325/anarchism-war1
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2009/326/anarchism-war2
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/328/anarchism
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/world-war-ii
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/internationalist-anarchism
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/official-anarchism
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/file/5290
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/korea
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/ssangyong
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/vestas-occupation
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/ir/318
[23] https://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/jld/
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-reports
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/icc-18th-congress