The economic crisis
1. From the Far East to the heartlands of capitalism the brutal contradictions of the global crisis of overproduction have unfolded as the world economy has sunk into open recession since the summer of 1997. "The full extent of the financial crisis which began over a year ago in South-East Asia is beginning to emerge. It took a new plunge during the summer with the collapse of the Russian economy, and the unprecedented convulsione unprecedented convulsions of the 'emerging countries' of Latin America. But today, it is the developed countries of Europe and North America that are in the firing line, with the continual slide on their stock exchanges and the constant downward adjustments of their forecast growth. We have come a long way from the bourgeoisie's euphoria of a few months back expressed in the dizzy rise in western markets during the first half of 1998. Today, the same 'specialists' who had congratulated themselves on the 'good health' of the Anglo-Saxon countries, and who forecast a recovery for all the European countries, are the first to talk of recession, or even 'depression'. And they are right to be pessimistic. The clouds gathering over the most powerful economies are pregnant, not with some passing squall, but with a veritable tempest, an expression of the dead-end into which the capitalist economy has plunged" (IR 95, 'Economic disaster reaches capitalism's heart')
2. The slide into world recession has shaken all of the British bourgeoisie's propaganda about the success of the British economy, the 'recovery' under the Major government and the 'boom' that followed the election of Labour. Growth forecasts are continually revised downwards: they have gone from 2.1% for 1998 to under 1%. Business reports have vied with each other in their gloomy predictions about the state of the economy. A report produced by y the CBI at the end of October 98 said business confidence was at its lowest since the height of the recession of the 1980's. The British Chamber of Commerce talked of the 'meltdown' of manufacturing. Ernst and Young, the international accountants, using the Treasury's own computer model of the economy, have predicted up to 500.000 lays-offs in manufacturing over the next two years. According the House of Commons Library 300 manufacturing jobs are going a day at present and this will increase to 600 next year. The City of London has been shaken by the financial earthquakes reverberating around the world economy. Profits are forecast (by the CBI) to fall from 3% in 197, to 0.7% in 98 and to 0.1% in 1999. There has already been the wave of closures of state of the art electronics factories: Siemens, Hyundai, Via-systems. In the car industry, a central part of the industrial base, Rovers are laying off up to 4,000 workers and the remaining workers are being called on to accept the loss of overtime pay and bonuses which amount to a 25% pay cut, Ford's have introduced short time working.
These expressions of the plunge towards open recession are only the beginning
3. Confronted with these increasing manifestations of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, the British bourgeoisie has responded in the only way it can: to strengthen state capitalism. This is is one of New Labour's most important tasks. It has to increase the competitiveness of British capitalism through tighter state control, which goes hand in hand with attacking the working class at every level. However, this does not mark a break with the 'free market' Tory government, but the continuation of the latter's defence of state capitalism.
The state's role in preventing economic catastrophes is in fact the expression of a general tendency imposed on all countries and all governments in this epoch. It is a characteristic of decadent capitalism to resort to the state power in order to maintain the functioning of an economic machine which, left to itself, would be doomed to paralysis by its own internal contradictions.
Since the First World War, which expressed the fact that the survival of each nation depended on its ability to use force to grab a place on a restricted world market, the capitalist economy has had to statify itself permanently. In decadent capitalism, state capitalism is a universal tendency. According to the country or the historic period, this tendency has assumed more or less developed forms and rhythms. However, it has never stopped advancing, to the point where the state machine is at the heart of economic and social life in all countries.
After the Second World War the most important parts of British capitalism were nationalnalised by both Labour and Tories. With the reappearance of the open economic crisis at the end of the 1960's the state used policies of increasing inflation and public and private debt in order to try and manage the crisis through artificially stimulating demand.
In the 1980's the state introduced the Medium Term Financial Strategy with which it tried to manipulate the exchange rate, interest rates, the money supply and inflation in order to try and manage the economy's decent into crisis. The state methodically cut out the unprofitable parts of the economy: steel, coal, shipbuilding etc much of this was done in the name of 'privatisation' and 'deregulation'. This policy not only cut out the dead wood but also sought to better integrate 'private' capital and the state at the level of management. Firms such as BT were exposed to the market and had to carry out massive lay-offs, but the state reinforced its overall control through the use of regulatory controls that dictate pricing and investment policies. The state also holds controlling stakes in the privatised industries and has places on all the boards. At the same time all aspects of local government and the NHS were brought under centralised control. By the end of the 1980's the British state had a firmer control over the whole economy than ever.
In the 1990's the Major government introduced its "strategy for growth", whicich pumped £1.5 billion into the economy, introduced the biggest rises in taxes since the Napoleonic war, increased public spending by £29.4 billion. Personal debt rose from a situation in 1991 where repayments were greater than the increase in debt to one in 1996 where net debt increased by £3.5 billion. The government also stimulated the recovery by devaluing the Pound by 30% and through staying out of the EMU once, it had been pushed out. The main attacks on working class living standards were organised directly by the central government, e.g. the Job Seekers Allowance.
4. Since coming to power New Labour have set about reinforcing these state measures for trying to manage the crisis with great gusto.
A central theme of the government has been the need for 'flexibility', 'employability' and the imperative need for bridging the 'productivity gap' i.e. the need for workers to work harder, longer and for less pay. Labour makes no bones about using the high pound and interest rates to force the economy to improve 'productivity'. These measures have also been backed up by changes to the tax and welfare system which make its easier for bosses to employ workers on low wages, thus further adding to the 13 million on poverty wages already. The changes to the welfare system will further drive down wages, by pushing tens of thousands off of benefits and into the he job market.
Labour has also made it clear that it will continue the policy of cutting out the dead wood. The closure of the high tech plants, threat of lay-offs at Rover etc, have all brought the same response from the government: 'get on with it because it is vital to increase productivity'.
5. Along with these measures have gone unprecedented attacks on the social wage. Labour is carrying out an all-out assault on the welfare system. They have made it clear that they are going to cut back on every benefit and that no one should 'expect benefits for life'. Single parent benefits are to be cut by £10; the sick and disabled are to have their benefits cut and will have to undergo new tests to assess whether they can work or not. This will force tens of thousands off benefits. Workers receiving occupational pensions because they have become ill through industrial accidents or general illness will have their benefits cut. The idea of compulsory second pensions is also being put forward. This amounts to a new tax and justification for cutting the state pension. These attacks are set to continue with yet more 'reforms' of the welfare system to come as the state desperately seeks to cut its costs.
6. The accelerating descent of the world economy into open recession is pushing British capitalism towards its worstworst recession, even depression, since the 30's. The state capitalist measures taken by the British bourgeoisie through Labour have helped to put in place their strategy for trying to manage this descent into recession. However, "...the application of state measures, all the co-ordination of economic policy between the most developed countries, all the 'salvage plans' cannot save capitalism form a growing bankruptcy, even if they do enable it to slow down the pace of the catastrophe". (International Situation Resolution from the 13th RI Congress, IR 94)
Imperialist tensions
7. The broad framework for understanding Britain's role in the world imperialist game, as presented to the last WR Congress, has been fully confirmed:
"The tendency of 'every man for himself' in imperialist relations has continued to grow throughout the world over the last two years. One of the most striking illustrations of this tendency has been the decline of Britain's 'special relationship' with the United States...
In ex-Yugoslavia the policies of Britain and America clash sharply...
...The entente (with France) is particularly fragile - along with all imperialist alliances today - since it is a coming together of two second-rate, historically declining powers of essent essentially equal strength. Neither party is ready to subordinate its interests to the other and the entente is therefore unstable...
.... If resistance to the imperialist ambitions of the US continues to be the main orientation of British imperialist policy, its antipathy to the designs of Germany is a historical part of that policy which remains valid today, especially given the reanimation of Germany's ambitions following the collapse of the eastern bloc and the reunification of Germany...
... The US has sought to punish Britain for its disloyalty by exacerbating the conflict in Northern Ireland in the name of peace" ('Theses on the British Situation', WR 201).
All of these tendencies have been accentuated, as the contradictions of the imperialist jungle have become more acute, with the tendency towards every man for himself dominating over the tendency towards the formation of new blocs. Without the threat of another bloc to make the second and third rate powers submit themselves to one of the bloc leaders, the tendency for each imperialist power to 'save their own furniture' is increasing the imperialist chaos. This does not mean that the potential alternative bloc leader, German imperialism, is not seeking to build a bloc around it. It clearly is, through the development of its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and its increasingly active engagemgement in 'peace keeping' missions. Nevertheless, its ability to do this is weakened by the general situation of every power being out for its own.
8. In this international context, the decision of the British bourgeoisie to place Labour in government has greatly strengthened its ability to defend its independent imperialist strategy. The inability of the bitterly divided Tory Party to defend the interests of the main faction of the British bourgeoisie was a server weakness: "...The main faction of the British bourgeoisie has appreciated that the best defence of its imperialist interests lies in pursuing an independent policy. There will be times when this necessitates alliances, but these will tend to be short-lived and unstable. As a second division power, incapable of aspiring to the status of leader of an imperialist bloc, British imperialism can have no long-term orientation. The Labour government of Tony Blair will speak of its 'ethical' arms policy and insist on its desire for 'peace' throughout the world, but above all it will pursue an independent orientation for British imperialism. No longer the all-powerful bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century, British imperialism remains a ruthless force in the increasing chaos of international relations. It is no longer the strongest of imperialisms, but it is still one of the smartest when it comes to an orientation in the defefence of its particular interests". (British imperialism, the orientations of a second-rate power, in WR 216 & 217). Tony Blair's speech to the 1997 Labour Party Conference clearly expressed this 'independent' line: "My vision of post-Empire Britain is clear, It is to make this country pivotal, a leader in the world. With the US our friend and ally, within the Commonwealth, in the United Nations, in NATO. To use the superb reputation of our armed forces, not just for defence, but as an instrument of influence in a would of collective security and co-operation...to make Britain a beacon to the world".
9. The apparent friendship between Blair and Clinton has raised questions about whether the special relationship between the USA and Britain really has ended. On several levels, there has been a certain warming of relations since the election of Labour, as witness the whole Third Way campaign; Britain's backing for the US over Iraq in 96 and at the beginning of 98; its support for the US-backed Kabila regime in the Democratic Republic of Congo; support for the attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan. However these have to be seen as part of the diplomatic policy of British imperialism. Given its position as a second rate power, combined with its historical links to the US, British imperialism is not going to break off relations with the US. These relations cannot be seen inin black and white terms either. British imperialism will seek to ally itself with Uncle Sam only so long as it serves its interests. In particular, it will support those actions by the US that it thinks will stop or hinder the emergence of German imperialism, for example the enlargement of NATO. Or, in the case of Iraq, it has no choice but to support the US faced with the diplomatic offensive of French and German imperialism in the Gulf region.
Moreover, in some of the most important foci of imperialist conflict we can see growing tension between the US and Britain.
In the Balkans, Britain has backed US threats against Serbia over Kosovo, because it understood that these threats were primarily aimed at the German-backed KLA and that the US couldn't afford to inflict too much damage on Serbia because it is the main anti-German regional power. Thus, Britain can carry on giving discrete support to its Serb ally and thus maintain its influence. One of the first actions of the Labour government was to send the minister of defence to the Balkans in order to hold talks with the Bosnian Serb leadership, at a time when the US was trying to diplomatically isolate it.
Labour has also continued the previous government's efforts to undermine the US's position in the Middle East. The Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's visit to Israel and deliberate provocation of the Ie Israeli bourgeoisie was aimed at further stirring up tensions between the US and Israel.
In Africa, British imperialism has taken some punishment from the US for its independence. The US has replaced GB as the main backer of the strategically important central and east African State of Uganda. This was once a very loyal British ally in the region.
10. The full import of the imperialist tensions between the US and Britain are made plain by the situation in Northern Ireland. Over the past two years, the US has kept up its efforts to punish Britain by interfering in its Ulster backyard. The Good Friday Agreement, being essentially a Pax Americana, represented a significant victory over Britain:
"If the British bourgeoisie and its mass media has lauded Blair as the peacemaker in Ulster, it's to make the best of the reverse that it has suffered at the hands of the United States over the Northern Irish peace agreement and salvage what it can for its international standing.
The Good Friday agreement confirms a US-sponsored process, begun in 1994 with the Irish Republican Army's cease-fire, of undermining the hold of Britain over this part of its territory. Britain's role in the sabotage of US objectives in the Balkans conflict during this decade not only confirmed the end of the special relationship between Bren Britain and the US, but also the generalised trend of 'every man for himself'...The US has returned the favour on Britain in the latter's own backyard. By supporting the political wing of the IRA, Sinn Fein, the US is punishing Britain for its pretensions at playing an independent role on the wider arena...The Good Friday Agreement confirms what has been implicit in the peace process since 1994: the elevation of armed republicanism, courtesy of Washington, from pariah to an official political player in the running of Northern Ireland" ('Northern Ireland: Imperialist 'peace' means further bloodshed', WR 214).
British imperialism has sought to fight back against this US victory. Every inch of the way it has tried to undermine the 'peace process'. The most brutal expression of this was the Omagh bombing, which devastated the heart of a strong nationalist town and killed 28 people. While there is no direct proof that the British State planted the bomb, it certainly made sure it gained as much as possible from it. The republican movement came under considerable pressure as the Unionists opposed Sinn Fein taking up its seat on the Northern Ireland Executive, while the bombing also enabled the British state to impose draconian 'anti-terrorist' law on the mainland and in the North.
However, Sinn Fein - with US advice - wrong footed these British moves by rapidly denouncing the bombmbing and those who did it. Sinn Fein came out of this situation looking even more like a defender of peace than before. It was also very willing to help hunt down the bombers, whom they probably knew were being manipulated by the British. It was for this reason also that the Eire Government also introduced new anti-terrorist laws.
11. Europe was one of the main reasons the Tories had to go. Since coming to office Labour has shown that it is going to continue the orientation of an independent policy towards Europe, based firmly on trying to undermine German imperialist ambitions: "We want there to be three key players in Europe, not two" (Foreign Office Mission Statement). To this end, Labour has carried out the usual duplicitous game of British imperialism. On the one hand it is certainly making a greater effort to increase British influence in Europe (much more friendly attitude to Germany and France, talking and make preparations to join the Euro sooner or later, etc). However, these actions are being used to stop British imperialism being pushed to the sidelines and thus not being able to counter the ambitions of German imperialism. British imperialism has to be at all the negotiating tables of the European bourgeoisie in order to defend its interests and to seek opportunities to make alliances against Germany. This includes efforts to place a wedge between the Germanan/French relationship.
12. In July 1998 the Labour government issued its Strategic Defence Review. This work was the culmination of the lessons learnt about the military/imperialist demands of the new period. The Review assimilates the need for: "an integrated external policy' using all the instruments at the government's disposal -diplomatic, "developmental" as well as military" (The Guardian 10th July 98). The Review also gives British imperialism a whole swathe of reasons for justifying its intervention around the world. In particular it states that threats to national defence are not just military ones: "It refers to drugs and organised crime, terrorism, environmental degradation and threats posed by information technology" (idem).
This strategic plan "will enable either a division level deployment or two simultaneous brigade size deployments, one of the latter being sustainable indefinitely" (International Defence Review, August 1998).
This is what Blair meant by his "instrument of influence". British imperialism, drawing on the lessons learnt in Bosnia etc is giving itself the capacity to intervene anywhere that British imperialist ambitions needs to.
13. The only perspective for British imperialism is an ever more desperate struggle to defend its o its own interests against the encroachment of its main rivals. These will inevitably led to the increased use of military power, for which British imperialism is preparing.
Political strategy of the bourgeoisie
14. The electoral victory of New Labour marked an important strengthening of the British bourgeoisie and has allowed a revitalisation of the whole democratic campaign that had begun to lose its impact on the proletariat. It also marked the British bourgeoisie's successful overcoming of the weaknesses caused by the Tories remaining in government.
"The Tory Party's life in office spans the concluding phase of the western bloc's offensive against the USSR (1979-89) as well as the period since the collapse of the blocs. As a result the Tory government, despite its leading Britain away from its former role as loyal, lieutenant of Washington, has been particularly vulnerable to the counter-veiling and destabilising pressure from the United States.
But at present time, the task of the bourgeoisie in implementing the further attacks to come is to reinforce the present disorientation of the working class in Britain by preserving the illusions of change through the 'democratic' institutions of the bourgeois state - illusions given a new lease of life by the collapse of the Easte Eastern Bloc.. In the short term, a 'victory' for the caring, sharing face of capitalism in Britain - and the rest cure for the Tories in opposition - would add a considerable stimulus to the big democratic campaigns currently being foisted on the working class internationally" ('Theses on the British Situation').
The last two years have fully confirmed this analysis. We have not only seen the whole election campaign that dominated the social terrain for months before the election, the bourgeoisie has also maintained this democratic onslaught since then, with the referendum on national assemblies in Scotland and Wales, the future elections of these bodies, the campaigns about proportional representation, the possible election of city mayors, and so on. The furore over the arrest of General Pinochet is in continuity with these campaigns.
These democratic campaigns are backed up by Labour's 'big idea': the 'Third Way'. This presents Labours' defence of British state capitalism as something new, as something going beyond the 'old ideologies' of Left and Right, the 'unrestrained free marker' and 'state centralisation'. This is a powerful ideological weapon because it reinforces the whole anti-communism, 'death of the class struggle' campaign. With this ideology the idea of the end of class is reinforced and the idea of the class struggle is replaced by the concept of the 'stake-hololder society' where everyone has a stake in society and a responsibility to the 'community'. Thus, the working class is submerged in individualism and inter-classism. The 'Third Way' is a mystification being used on an international scale, as shown by the complexion of the new Schroder government in Germany.
15. Drawing the lessons of the destructive internal feuding of the Tory Party in the last years of its government, the British bourgeoisie has rebuilt New Labour in such a fashion that it will be much better able to withstand the pressures imposed on it by the crisis, imperialist tensions and decomposition generally. The Labour Party is tightly controlled and disciplined from the centre at every level. No opposition is 'officially' tolerated
While this control maintains the necessary discipline in the party, it also allows the left wing of the party, and the left generally, to present themselves as the defenders of the 'socialist and democratic traditions' of the Labour Party. The old war-horses of the Labour left, Benn, Skinner, Livingstone, are still the ones most willing to criticise New Labour. At the same time a whole new generation of Labour left MP's are starting to make names for themselves. A prime example of this is Diane Abbot, who appears to be the main critical voice of the left as regards economic policy.
16. Since the election we have seen the continuation and accentuation of the factional struggle inside the Tory Party. The pro-US wing has gained the upper hand. The election of Hague, a long-term Thatcherite and Euro-sceptic, to the leadership marked an important blow to the pro-independence faction. The Hague faction, with the full backing of Thatcher, has built up a campaign to drive out or silence the opposing faction. In various statements the leadership has made it clear they will tolerate no dissension and that if the pro-European wing does not tow the line they should leave the party. This struggle reached a new level of bitterness at the 1998 Party conference.
The bitterness of the struggle in the Tory party demonstrates the problems the British bourgeoisie has in controlling its right wing party. One of the reasons for the election of Labour was to allow the right to go into opposition and sort out it problems. However, as things now stand, should the Tories be required to return to office to carry out the necessary attacks on the working class, and to allow Labour to go back into opposition, the bourgeoisie as a whole would be faced with the inconvenience that its right wing party no longer defended its principal orientations in matters of foreign policy.
17. On a wider level, the bourgeoisie, by means of New Labour, hashas sought to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state.
New Labour promised to be "tough on crime and the causes of crime" and since coming to power they have certainly toughened up the repressive apparatus:
* MI5 and MI6 have been openly more integrated into police work.
* The Law and Disorder Bill introduces whole new levels of repression:
* All government agencies are now to be integrated together much more tightly. The police, Social Services, Social Security, Customs etc are meant to work closer together on joint operations. The first such operation shows what is to come. In operation Mermaid 52 police forces are to mount road blocks across the country on a set day: the justification is to check on the safety of commercial vehicles, but these road blocks while also be manned by Customs officers and benefits fraud squads;
* All of the computers of the state apparatus are also to be brought under common programs in order to 'better fight fraud';
* The Law and Disorder Bill continues the British state's draconian criminalisation of children. The only response of the state to the growing weight of decomposition on the young is repression: more prisons for children (Britain has more children in prison than any other European country), curfews, 'Parenting Orders' forcing parentparents of troublesome children to go to state 'parenting' classes, etc.
* The 'caring, sharing, peoples' government is also inflicting the most brutal attack on immigrants in years. All immigrants who are seeking to gain permission to stay in Britain will no longer receive state benefits; they will now receive vouchers for food and clothing and then only after they have proved their families and communities cannot help them. They will also be dispersed all over the country. Immigration officers will now have the right to enter peoples' houses.
The Class Struggle
18. The 'Theses on the British Situation' from the 12th WR Congress gave the following framework on the development of the class struggle:
"... the difficult resurgence of working class struggle on an international scale is being deliberately hindered by the recent manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie that aim to reforge the chains of the trade unions on the working class. However, the appearance of these manoeuvres in Britain has been very different to that in France, Belgium and Germany, being marked not by mass demonstrations and nation-wide protests of fairly short duration, but long, isolated struggles dispersed across the country. Over the last two years in a number of strikes, notably those of the Liverpool dockers andrs and the postal workers, the unions have adopted a more radical stance, and have worked to bring out traditionally militant groups of workers. These disputes, which have not won even the illusory victories of the French strikes, have had their impact and have received displays of solidarity with the intention of delivering the message that it is only possible to struggle behind the unions, The result is the same as elsewhere: the hold of the unions has been strengthened and the path of the revival of struggle and consciousness made more difficult...
The proletariat is in a difficult situation, assailed on all sides by the bourgeoisie. Confused and unsure how to develop its struggle, it all to easily falls into the traps set for it. However, the very fact that the bourgeoisie needs to launch its manoeuvres on such a scale confirms that the resurgence exists and will continue. The bourgeoisie is trying with all its strength to stifle the potentiality of this situation by dragging the workers into the wasteland of reformism and democracy. Undoubtedly it will continue to have some success, but at the same time, the deepening of the economic crisis will compel it to make further attacks on working class living standards and this will certainly provoke reactions from the workers. Furthermore, in this situation the bourgeoisie cannot go on repeating the same manoeuvres for fear that their real function will be exposed. Conditions are therefore maturing for the development not only of workers' militancy, but also for a greater consciousness about the stakes of the situation and a greater awareness about the tricks of the bourgeoisie".
The past two years have seen the development of this dynamic. At the international level we have seen struggles in the US, Denmark, Russia, Korea, Greece, France and elsewhere, expressions of a mounting discontent and militancy within the class. Britain is no exception. There have been small but important expressions of this growth in combativity. For example, the strike by 25,000 postal workers in April which saw the struggle spreading from Liverpool to offices in London and elsewhere. There was also an unofficial strike by several hundred care workers in Glasgow, strikes at the BBC, by firemen, and railway maintenance workers, all in response to attacks on conditions, jobs and pay.
19. These expression of growing militancy are unfolding in a context where the unions are still largely able to control the class. This makes it possible for the bourgeoisie to carry out numerous manoeuvres aiming at ensuring that the revival of combativity doesn't take place in an uncontrolled way.
The dialectical relationship between the revival of combativity and the efforts of the bourgeoisie to counter it is the mai main feature of the transitional phase we are in:
"... we are today in a kind of transition period between the one in which the unions were regaining their credibility, and one in which they will be exposed and discredited more and more. One of the characteristics of this period is the revival of the themes of 'fighting' trade unionism, in which the 'rank and rile' are supposed to be able to push the union leaders to be more radical...or where there is supposed to be a 'base union' which can 'really' defend the workers' interests despite the 'sell-out of the leaders' (a notable example being the dockers' strike in the UK)" (Resolution on the international situation, 12th ICC Congress).
In the recent struggles, we have seen the growth in the role of the radical rank and file movement. This was particularly marked in the electricians' strike of last November, when it was the union stewards who opposed themselves to the leadership, organising a co-ordinating committee of stewards from the main sites involved in the strike. The radical unionists also use the illegal nature of the unofficial strike and possible repression to indulge in all sorts of 'clandestine' activities: secrete meetings, stewards using false names. etc.
However, given the particular situation in Britain, i.e. the reign of a New Labour government, the union leaderships have themselvelves been able to increase their credibility by mounting a very verbal 'opposition' to many of the attacks of the government.
20. Labour has backed up its democratic campaigns with others which seek to use all the expressions of the decomposition of society - drugs, crime, child abuse, etc - in order to get the working class to look to the state for protection. For example, Labour has made much of its plans to be 'tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime'. It has also deliberately stirred up public anger about child molesters, racist attacks, etc.
21. We have also seen the full use of the anti-communist campaign over the past period. It was not accidental that Figes' book The People's Tragedy was originally in English, given the international importance of the language. This has been backed up by what must be one of the most crude pieces of bourgeoisie black propaganda since the last war - the BBC TV program on Lenin which sought to present him as a near psychopath who ordered the killing of millions, who organised the October 'coup' because he had a brain tumour, and whose general nastiness could be seen from the way he kept his desk very neat! This may be laughable but the BBC obviously knew it could have a powerful impact not only here but abroad. The working class was also subjected to much weeping and wailing ing about how cruel the Bolsheviks were when the bones of the Czar and his family were reburied this year.
22. Over the past two years, the leftists have been fully implicated in the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie.
In the build up to the election, all the different groups carried out their role of giving the democratic process a 'socialist' and 'critical' gloss.
Since the election and the development of the attacks, the leftists have sought to channel workers' discontent into the whole democratic campaign. New Labour is criticised for "giving up on the idea of radically transforming society" (Socialist Worker, 21.3.98). Workers are also called on to place their trust in democracy in order to fight the attacks: According to the SWP, "a fight which can stop the attacks (means) petitions, lobbies of MP's surgeries, pressure on trade union leaders to fight, demonstrations and marches..." (SW 10.198).
As we have seen, with the unfolding of the new government's attacks on the working class there has been the development of an 'opposition' on the left of the Labour Party. This 'opposition' has been loudly supported by the leftists. Those members of the left of the Labour Party are presented as the 'defenders of the socialist traditions of the real Labour Party'.
The leftists, with the SWP in the vanguard, will continue to carry out their role as the radical wing of the Labour left and the trade unions. Faced with the deepening world recession and the necessity for Labour to carry out increasingly brutal attacks, the leftists' 'critique' of the government's actions, and of the 'betrayals' and 'hesitations' of the trade union leaders in response, will be an increasingly important part of the bourgeoisie's efforts to contain workers' discontent within the capitalist framework.
23. Despite all these forces arrayed against the working class, the inexorable deepening of the economic crisis will be a vital factor in the slow, uneven, but definite revival both in class combativity and in class-consciousness. The first, because the class will be compelled to reply to the increasingly frontal attacks demanded by the crisis; the second, because the crisis reveals the utter bankruptcy of the capitalist system, and obliges the proletariat to develop a perspective, a conscious overall goal, for its immediate struggles. The international scope of this class resurgence will also feed into both these dimensions of the struggle in Britain. Revolutionaries cannot underestimate the difficulties still faced by the proletariat, but it is their task to be at the sides of their class, to intervene actively in its battles in order to assist it to overcome the difficulties and progress towards a decisive confrontation with the bourgeois order.
WR, 8.11.98
The article we are publishing below was written in July 1998, following the decision of the Dutch councilist group Daad en Gedachte to cease regular publication of its press. Since then, several meetings have taken place with the participation of Cajo Brendel, one of the group's leading members (we will give a full account of these later in the ICC's international press). Nonetheless, to date our fears as to the future of the group's publication have proven justified, since it has not reappeared.
In July 1997, the Dutch councilist group Daad en Gedachte published the following position in its press: "This will be the last issue of Daad en Gedachte. Various circumstances force us to cease publication of our paper, which we have produced for more than 30 years. But this in no way means that the group which published this paper will remain inactive. In more than half a century since the Second World War, capitalism and the class struggle have undergone radical changes. The significance of the traditional workers' movement has constantly declined, and by contrast it has become more and more obvious that a movement of the workers is slowly developing. The Daad en Gedachte group intends to deepen its understanding of these developments. Factory occupations, which before World War II were limited essentially to France and the USA, have become the rule rather than the exception. Moreover, these occupations are themselves are subject to change.
The Daad en Gedachte group intends to produce an in-depth study in different 'chapters', which it will send, after discussion, to its readers. They will thus receive a study in several parts. Naturally, these parts will be published irregularly.
We would be much helped in this work by by critical reactions from our readers to each of the parts which we send them. We do not expect to be able to finish this work in the short term. Our study will certainly take several years"
The ICC considered that this decision by Daad en Gedachte to cease regular publication of its monthly paper as a highly dangerous step, which could very well lead to the disappearance pure and simple of the publication. The disappearance of the voice and militant activity of a group like Daad en Gedachte, which is both an integral part of the proletarian tradition, and the last organised representative of an important historic current - council communism - would be a point scored for the bourgeoisie. It is always a victory for the ruling class when it is able to silence a voice which has defended, even confusedly, the revolutionary perspective of the proletariat. Similarly, the disappearance of Daad en Gedachte would weaken the working class.
The ICC is convinced that proletarian organisations must defend themselves against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology in their own ranks. Any concession to the sirens of the ruling ideology, especially on organisational principles, is an instant threat to the very survival of any proletarian group. This is why the ICC sent Daad en Gedachte a letter, where we insist that the group should go back on its decision to end d publication of its paper, which the ICC fears will be the first stage in its own suicide.
"Daad en Gedachte is the last representative of a historic current within the workers' movement: councilism. We think therefore, that your decision does not just concern your own organisation. Whatever the political positions and analyses that separate us, we consider that this political current is fundamentally part of the historic heritage of the workers' movement and has largely contributed to its theoretical and practical advance (see our book on the German-Dutch Left). As the last group issued from this political current, your decision to end the regular publication of your paper - and hence of your analyses and positions on the international situation, the class struggle and theoretical questions - is in effect to decide the disappearance de facto of the voice of the councilist current within the working class and the revolutionary movement".
In our letter to Daad en Gedachte, the ICC emphasised the vital need for proletarian voices to denounce the bourgeoisie's propaganda. The bourgeoisie has orchestrated a widespread campaign against the revolutionary perspective of the working class, following the collapse of the Eastern bloc, identifying the proletarian revolution with its Stalinist butcher. It also reaffirms that the proletariat needs its revolutionarary minorities to be able to fulfil its historic potential, and that the publication of issues 'by theme' does not correspond to the needs of the working class.
"(...) Faced with all these lies, the working class more than ever needs an antidote, it needs its revolutionary organisations to explain and demystify all this media campaign, denounce the bourgeoisie's goals and propaganda, and defend our goal of communism loud and clear. Without a perspective, without the clear consciousness of the possibility and necessity of socialism, no revolution is possible, nor even any general widening of the working class' movement of struggle. This task demands a publication which can provide the working class and its advanced minorities with regular answers to the daily lies of the bourgeoisie. (...) On the part of revolutionary organisations, this demands clear answers to the expectations of the class, of its combative minorities and most conscious elements. It is vital to remind the working class of the lessons of its past struggles. Who else but the revolutionary groups, and with what other tools than a press, can we answer this need for memory within the proletariat? This demands that revolutionaries regularly develop analyses and responses for the class, that they should live up to what is expected of them in the recovery of working class combativity (...) The needs and expectations of the working cllass are enormous, all its needs that we have set out above demand regular analyses and positions, as the situation evolves, which cannot be met by a thematic publication. An irregular publication cannot replace a regular one either in its content or, above all, in its function. One of the fundamental roles of revolutionaries is to take part in the development of the consciousness and self-organisation of the working class. Within the workers' movement, the regular press has always been the main weapon for revolutionaries to intervene in the working class and defend the perspective of communism. This task cannot be carried out by an irregular thematic review. We would remind you here of the precedent of the Spartacus group, which took a similar decision at the end of the 1970s, and which only led to the group's disappearance. We think that your decision inevitably contains the danger of the splitting and eventual disappearance of the Daad en Gedachte group" (1).
To date (July 1998), there has been no sign of a publication from Daad en Gedachte, whether of its regular paper or a thematic publication (the first part of its study, for example). Nor has the group replied to the ICC's letter. This confirms the gravity of the situation in which the group finds itself (to say the least). It confirms that, although the group may continue with some of its internal activity, for the momeent it no longer has any external activity. This confirms that the danger of a reduction in activity to the point of the group's disappearance is a real one, just as the ICC warned. For the moment, Daad en Gedachte's voice no longer exists within the proletariat, and it is to be feared that eventually the group itself will disappear, just as the Communistenbond Spartacus did after it stopped regular publication.Daad en Gedachte is unable to defend itself against the pressure of ruling class ideology. Consequently, the group is unable to see that it is on the road to its own demise, any more than it can see that its disappearance would score a victory for the bourgeoisie and a setback for the proletariat. But even if Daad en Gedachte cannot see it, the proletarian political milieu cannot just sit back and watch while an expression of the proletarian tradition commits political suicide. This is why the ICC calls the whole proletarian political milieu, including its contacts, to react to the decision of Daad en Gedachte. The proletarian political milieu has the duty to do all it can to pull Daad en Gedachte back from its dangerous path. We must warn it not to give in to bourgeois propaganda, which leads to the abandonment of revolutionary activity. The proletarian political milieu must insist that Daad en Gedachte take up its responsibilities to the working class, which means renewing its militant activity with a view to resume regular publication. ICC (July 1998)
1) Extract from the ICC's letter to Daad en Gedachte dated 1st November 1997.
Daad en Gedachte group intends to deepen its understanding of these developments. Factory occupations, which before World War II were limited essentially to France and the USA, have become the rule rather than the exception. Moreover, these occupations are themselves are subject to change.Daad en Gedachte group intends to produce an in-depth study in different 'chapters', which it will send, after discussion, to its readers. They will thus receive a study in several parts. Naturally, these parts will be published irregularly.".As the missiles were falling on Iraq, fighting resumed in Kosovo between the Kosovan Liberation Army, and the Serbian armed forces. Once again, the civilian population has paid the price of this new outbreak of violence: massacres, forced evacuations, etc. The bourgeois media have headlined with the bloodbath in the Kosovan village of Racak. But the publicity given to the dozens of butchered and mutilated civilians is nothing but an opportunity for the great western 'democracies' to make a show of their 'horror'. It will also serve as a pretext for any future military intervention by the greintervention by the great powers - 'for peace', of course. But whatever their mock outrage today, it is none other than the western ruling classes who are responsible, and guilty of the killings in ex-Yugoslavia. Once again, a few hundred miles from the Western European heart of world capitalism, the sound of arms reminds us that there is no peace possible under capitalism, especially not in the strategic region of the Balkans, which remains at the centre of the confrontation between the great powers.
In January, we witnessed once again, as in the early months and the autumn of 1998, the confrontation between Milosevic's Serbian armed forces and the Albanian army for the 'liberation' of Kosovo, the KLA. If Serb repression of any move towards the independence of Kosovo has been so ferocious, it is because Serbia cannot do without the province, in particular because it offers an opening towards the Mediterranean. More than anything, however, it represents the front line in the confrontation between the great powers, above all between the US super-power and German imperialism, which is still discreetly pursuing its Balkan offensive towards the south.
This situation is characteristic of the situation opened up by the collapse of the Eastern bloc, and the end of the Western bloc: a period of 'look after number one', of the 'war of each against all' - and especially between the ex-Allies of the bloc lead b by the USA, given the desire of the main European powers to settle accounts with their one-time godfather. This is why all the European powers have invited themselves to the crisis in Kosovo: from France and Britain, who have been forced for the moment to line up behind Uncle Sam just to keep a stake in the game, to Italy, which wants to play a lone hand and defend its 'historic' pretensions on the eastern shore of the Adriatic.
Last year and again today, the fighting has been sparked by Germany pushing the Kosovan independentists onto the offensive. This could only endanger the Pax Americana set up by the Dayton Accords to stifle the war in ex-Yugoslavia - a war which was itself begun in 1991 by Germany's attempt to advance through Croatia towards the Mediterranean.
In the first months of 1998, the KLA was badly mauled by the Serbian army. Lately, however, it has recovered its strength thanks to finance and weapons from Germany. Other third-rate European powers have also lent a hand. Switzerland especially, has been financing the rearmament of the KLA, and since the withdrawal of Serb forces has also taken part - under 'humanitarian' cover of course - in the reconstruction of Kosovo, and of 'local forces'.
Just as the US was making its show of strength over Iraq, the KLA came back into the open, trying to undermine Serb rule. German imperialism wa was once more on the offensive, threatening the status quo defended by the US. As we wrote in December 1998: "Bonn aims to break up the present Yugoslav republic dominated by Serbia (...) A weakened Serbia would open the door to German expansion in the region and towards the Mediterranean" (RI 285). Faced with the threat, Washington had no choice but to cover and support Serbia's new campaign of repression and 'cleansing' in December-January. Despite NATO's military presence in the region, strengthened since the discovery of the Racak massacre, supposedly to put pressure on a Serbia guilty of 'violating human rights', US policy aims to block Germany and so rejects any suggestion of independence for Kosovo. The US has thus done all it can to avoid hindering Serb pressure on the Kosovans. This support for Serbia is not new: in 1998, NATO only intervened after the Serbian offensive had defeated the KLA forces.
The sound of marching boots in ex-Yugoslavia confirms once again that capitalism can only drag humanity down into barbarism. War today is only a foretaste of those to come, when this or that 'nation' or ethnic group on the ex-Yugoslav chessboard enters the fray, encouraged by this or that imperialist shark. Today, as yesterday, the civilian population will be the pawns of imperialist appetites, and many will perish in the endless confrontations between rival imperialist gangsterss. 1999 begins as 1998 ended: to the sound of gunfire, showing once again that capitalism's only 'progress' is towards more wars and barbarism. HPL (22/1/99)
A NEW EPOCH IS BORN
80 years ago, in March 1919, the Communist International held its founding Congress in Moscow. The following article, originally published in WR 122, shows why this event was of immense importance for the international working class: faced with the outbreak of a massive, revolutionary challenge to capitalism all over the world, the CI was at to capitalism all over the world, the CI was at that moment the most advanced expression of the class movement, the crucible for synthesising the political programme needed to lead the movement to victory. Today, faced with the bourgeoisie's pernicious campaigns aimed at identifying communism with Stalinism and "proving" that marxist theory has been refuted by history, revolutionaries have the duty to affirm not only that they are the heirs of the CI, but also that its most central positions remain valid for the revolution of the future. The fact that the CI subsequently degenerated and succumbed to the Stalinist counter-revolution does not alter what it had been during the most heroic phase of the revolutionary wave that made the whole ruling class shake in its shoes.
"If we have been able to meet in spite of all the difficulties in our way... if we have been able, without any serious disagreements, to take important decisions on all the burning questions of the present revolutionary epoch, we owe it to the proletarian masses of the whole world, whose activity has put these questions of the agenda, and who have begun to resolve them practically".
These words of Lenin's are a graphic expression of the framework of the foundation of the Communist International: the break, by growing masses of proletarians, with th masses of proletarians, with the counter-revolution which after the definitive collapse of the 2nd International had made possible the unleashing of the imperialist massacre. The tragic patriotic euphoria of the first days of war was succeeded quickly enough by a growing revulsion in the face of the hideous reality of a war which pushed the barbarism of a now-senile capital to its paroxysm. The first great mutinies broke out in 1916, coinciding with the renewal of strikes on the home front, especially in Russia. Even if only a minority were involved as yet, even if the reaction seldom went beyond a simple "stop this bloody war", a breach was opened in the sordid holy alliance between the proletarians and their exploiters on the altar of the fatherland. At the same time, the few revolutionary forces who had refused to take part in the infamous betrayal of August 1914, when the workers' parties' colluded with imperialism, began to organise and regroup (Zimmerwald and Kienthal). Here again, although the movement only concerned a tiny minority, and although the Bolsheviks, followed by a few small groups of the German left, were the only ones to put forward a real alternative based on the slogan "transform the imperialist war into a civil war", the darkness which had fallen on the workers' movement began to clear. ovement began to clear. February 1917 was to be the first major crystallisation of this process, and October its high point as well as a gigantic springboard. Powerful strikes broke out in Italy, in Britain, in the United States; a little later the menace of proletarian insurrection loomed over Germany, the Republic of Workers' Councils was set up in Hungary, while in the colonies, as the CI noted: "the struggle is fought not solely under the banner of national liberation, but has already taken on an openly social character". The CI's formation is an integral part of the revolutionary wave which saw the workers break with their new guard-dog, the social democracy, gone over body and soul to the enemy class. The thrust of these struggles strengthened the communist minority; already in 1916, Lenin declared that it was impossible to reform the 2nd International, and at the same time that the formation of a new International was necessary. The same struggles pushed those who still hesitated to break from the old party to take the final step; they gave the little groups scattered around the world the strength to regroup under what was then the banner of the world proletarian revolution: Bolshevism. The tragically late formation of the CI (when the civil war had already been raging for a year) is a reflection of the proletariation of the proletariat's immaturity, and of revolutionaries' extreme difficulty in understanding the new period and its necessities. Only the regroupment of revolutionaries on a world level could allow this understanding to be deepened. This was the task that the 1st Congress undertook to accomplish. This is why it is a vital moment in the history of the proletarian struggle.
The communist programme in the epoch of capitalist decadence
The CI first and foremost defended the marxism that the 2nd International had betrayed and dragged in the dirt, by reaffirming the insoluble antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie, the absolute impossibility of a gradual and peaceful transition to socialism, and so the absolute necessity for the violent destruction of the bourgeois state; by raising aloft, against the nationalist gangrene that had eaten away the social democracy, the banner of proletarian internationalism: "The International will subordinate so-called national interests to the interests of the world revolution, and so will make the mutual aid of proletarians from different countries a reality". However, the cornerstone of this reaffirmation of marxism and its corollary, the denunciation of the social democratic parties as agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement, was the undes movement, was the understanding that a new epoch was born: "the epoch of the break-up of capitalism, of its internal collapse. The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat" (Platform of the CI, reprinted in International Review 94). The 1st Congress was imbued from start to finish with this feeling of living in a new era, with new needs and demands; some of its expressions may be spelled out as follows:
* first came the understanding that as capitalism floundered in the insurmountable contradictions of its own senility, it had changed, if not in its essence, at least in form. This is especially clear in Bukharin's report: "we must not only set out the general characteristics of the capitalist and imperialist system, we must also describe the system's process of disintegration and collapse...we must consider the capitalist system, not only in its abstract form, but also practically as world capitalism, and we must consider the latter as an economic totality." It is obvious that understanding capitalism as a world system which has invaded the whole planet determines the attitude that the proletariat adopts towards national liberation struggles, or towards temporary alliances with fractions of the bourgeoisie. Bukharin continued: "capitalism's primitive, dispersed form has almost disappeaersed form has almost disappeared. This process had already begun before the war, and has accelerated during the war. This war has been a great organiser. Under its pressure, finance capital has been transformed into a superior form: state capitalism." As Bukharin rightly noted, state capitalism, far from reducing capitalist anarchy, takes it to a higher level of direct confrontation between states. Here are the bases for understanding the particular form of decadent capitalism, of which the so-called 'socialist' countries are only one expression.
* the birth of a new epoch, the epoch of communist revolution, was also powerfully expressed on another fundamental point: the seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Here, the experience of the class struggle itself provided the basis for this understanding. Until then, only the Paris Commune had provided a few precious but limited ideas on the crucial problem of how the proletariat is to exercise its dictatorship, while decades of parliamentary struggle had blurred these precious lessons: "The dictatorship of the proletariat had become all Greek to the labouring masses: now, thanks to the worldwide example of the Soviets, this 'Greek' has been translated into every modern language: the labouring masses have discovered the practical form of the dictactical form of the dictatorship...all this demonstrates that the revolutionary form of the dictatorship of the proletariat has been discovered, and that the proletariat is now capable of putting its domination into practice." (Lenin). Throughout the Congress, speakers insisted on the importance of the councils. The urgent need to make a radical break with the 2nd International and its left-wing variants was constantly linked to the councils, the organs of the revolutionary proletariat. Born on the revolutionary tide, the whole Congress was the highest expression of the unity between the class and its party; the relationship between the two was understood as a moving dialectical unity. This was the opposite of the mechanistic vision, where class and party are seen as two separate entities, of which only the party is dynamic. Despite confusions over the relationship between party and class and the role of the councils, which were to reappear rapidly as soon as the proletariat suffered its first serious defeats, the 1st Congress nonetheless tended to break from the schema of the bourgeois revolution, where a minority of the revolutionary class holds power in the name of the whole - a schema transposed to the proletarian revolution and reinforced by years of trade union and parliamentary struggles.
* finally, the understanding of the change in period, and the new proletarian practice that this would demand, made it possible at least to pose, if not to resolve, the trade union and parliamentary questions that were to occupy such a preponderant place between the 1st and 2nd Congresses. Wherever radical struggles took place, the unions were pushed aside by strike committees, embryonic forms of the workers' councils; generally, as in Germany and Britain, the unions openly opposed the revolutionary movement, while the most combative workers deserted them. However, the wide differences in experience, and the fact that the process of the unions' integration into the state was only at its beginnings, meant that the problem could not be answered clearly and globally. As for the parliamentary question, while all the delegates agreed in giving it a secondary importance, well behind mass action and open struggle, the possibility of making revolutionary use of parliament was still defended, in particular by the Bolsheviks. Nonetheless, here again the question was posed.
The living marxism of the Communist International
All this makes it clear that we cannot reduce the fundamental contribution of the CI's 1st Congress to a mere reappropriation of marxism: or rather, that we have to be clear as to what the reappropria to what the reappropriation of marxism really means. Marxism is above all the crystallisation of the living experience of the proletariat, and has nothing to do with a ready-cooked doctrine stored in a historical freezer, to be brought out when called for like a TV dinner. The CI took the past experience of the proletariat, crystallised in marxism, as a basis and integrated into it the elements brought by the new period. In doing so, the CI's 1st Congress simply recognised that the programme is the work of the proletariat as a whole, the expression of its whole historical experience, crystallised and synthesised by its revolutionary minorities. The great combats of the proletariat have always enriched its programme, including on its most fundamental points. In 1871 the proletariat, and with it Marx and Engels, understood that the bourgeois state could not be conquered but would have to be destroyed; in 1917, it understood the form that the proletarian dictatorship must take; the power of the workers' councils.
Born on the revolutionary tide, and of the necessity and possibility of the communist revolution, the CI's 1st Congress powerfully expressed the change in period and the problems that this change posed for the class as a whole. As such, the Congress is one of the greatest moments in the history of the workers' movemehistory of the workers' movement.
Today, any revolutionary programme must integrate the gains of the CI, and especially of its 1st Congress. However, it is not enough to be satisfied with the CI's positions as such. While the CI made it possible for the revolutionary movement to take a giant step forward, it was nonetheless placed at the watershed between two epochs of capitalism, and confronted too rapidly with the reflux of the proletarian movement to be able to draw out all the implications of its analyses, and also break completely with the old social democratic vision. Its immense merit was, by regrouping the forces of revolution, to have laid the basis for such a break; it was from these bases that the left fractions that were to emerge from the CI were to continue the questioning that it began, to systematise the theoretical, programmatic and organisational implications of the analyses worked out during the Congress. In this way, the star that Victor Serge spoke of will always shine brightly for proletarians throughout the world. RN.
The slaughter of British tourists in Uganda has prompted the 'concerned' press to remind us of the terrifying scale of the war and chaos afflicting the entire African continent. An article in The Guardian of 6 March includes a list of the countries hit by war, genocide and internal collapse: Algeria, Sierra Leone, Congo Brazzavile, Sudan, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Rwanda/Burundi, Angola, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda and nda/Burundi, Angola, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda and Lesotho. The war between Ethiopia and Eritrea was a full scale confrontation between states, in which tens of thousands died over a worthless piece of land. The war around the Congo "described as the first continent-wide war, is reshaping Africa. A host of countries have been drawn into the conflict over Congo: Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Sudan and Chad on one side against Uganda and Rwanda on the other" (The Guardian, 6.3.99).
Nor is this military barbarism limited to Africa. The leaders of India and Pakistan have been talking peace, but the tensions between these powers have only been sharpened by their recent displays of nuclear sabre-rattling. The fighting between Muslim factions in Afghanistan has not gone away despite the predominance of the Taliban. The arrest of Kurdish leader Ocalan by the Turks is only one episode in the continuing guerilla war there. Israel has again invaded Lebanon in response to Hizbollah attacks on its troops. In Iraq, an 'undeclared war' is still going on: since the formal termination of the Desert Fox campaign, US and British planes have carried out over 100 military attacks on Iraqi installations, with the aim of gradually destroying Iraq's air defences. In Europe itself, the situation in Kosovo remains extremely tense despite the fragixtremely tense despite the fragile 'peace agreements' signed in Paris. In Northern Ireland, the Good Friday 'peace agreement' is once again teetering on the brink.
Ten years ago, when the Berlin Wall came down, we were told by the politicians and the media that the downfall of 'Communist Totalitarianism' meant the end of global military conflict, and made the world safe for peaceful trading, free enterprise, and economic growth. Today the world economic crisis is there for everyone to see, with the collapse of the Asian tigers and dragons, of Russia and Brazil, and the growing recession in the world's leading economies. Those promises of 'globalised' economic prosperity look ridiculous today.
As do the promises about world peace. Since the collapse of the eastern bloc we have seen more, not less military conflict in the world. In 1991 we had the war in the Gulf and the beginning of the war in ex-Yugoslavia, and both areas are still wracked by war at the end of the decade. The situation has been the same in Africa, even if the generalisation of the conflicts has reached a new level in the last year.
Local conflicts and the role of the great powers
The ruling class, ever anxious to hide the true nature of its system, has tried throughout this decade to explain each aughout this decade to explain each area of conflict in its own local terms. Wars in Africa are due to old tribal hatreds, and the same is more or less true for the Balkans and Ireland. The hatred between India and Pakistan is the result of religious differences, as is the fighting in Afghanistan. And so on. The added advantage of these explanations is that when the major world powers intervene directly in these conflicts, it makes it easier to present their intervention as being motivated by a concern to impose a bit of reason and humanity on these crazily outdated conflicts.
But as the conflicts become more and more widespread, it becomes harder and harder to deny that there are common features to them. Thus, The Guardian of March 6 accompanied its inquiry into the wars in Africa with a 'What can be done' piece, analysing how the impossible burden of debt weighing on Africa has led to the break-down of the economic and social fabric, fuelling the violent rivalries that are tearing these countries apart.
This is closer to the truth: war and militarism are indeed aggravated by the descent of the economy into the abyss, and it has long been a policy of the centres of world capitalism to push the effects of the crisis onto the more peripheral areas of the planet. In fact, at the economic level, Africa has more or less been abandon has more or less been abandoned to its fate. And in a deeper, historic sense, the omnipresence of war in this century is the most telling proof that capitalism, as a mode of production, has reached a total impasse.
But particular wars are not the automatic product of a particular degree of economic crisis. Indeed, war in the twentieth century has more and more detached itself from purely economic considerations. What it expresses above all is the jockeying for strategic advantage between the great capitalist powers who have divided up the planet. The imperialist nature of war in this period also determines the conflicts between local capitalist rivals. In short, all of today's wars are imperialist wars.
Hiding the imperialist nature of war
Ever since the first world war - whose capitalist/imperialist nature was more obvious, and which provoked a world wide proletarian revolutionary movement - the bourgeoisie has been trying to conceal this reality from the exploited. It presented world war two as the product of a fight between two systems - democracy and fascism. It presented the Cold War in a similar way, only this time 'communism' (in fact, Stalinist state capitalism) took the place of fascism. The ideology of the ruling class could not deny the reality of the conflict betweethe reality of the conflict between the American and Russian blocs, but it could at all costs seek to prevent its capitalist and imperialist nature being understood.
With the collapse of the imperialist bloc around the USSR, there could be no more myths about part of the world being 'non-capitalist'. In the new situation, imperialist rivalries didn't disappear. They merely followed new fault lines, as the USA's former allies began to contest its authority more and more. And just as during the cold war most of the conflicts were fought as proxy wars through local allies (Korea, Vietnam, Middle East, Africa, etc) so in the 'new world order' the great powers have fed local conflicts to further their particular interests. The war in ex-Yugoslavia has typified this: at different stages, we had Serbia being backed by France, Russia and Britain; Croatia and the KLA by Germany; Bosnia by the USA. The same story in Africa where the Americans have backed Islamic fundamentalists against the French in Algeria, while the French have backed the Islamic regime in Sudan against Christian rebels supported by the USA and Britain. During the genocide in Rwanda the French supported the Hutu death squads and America and Britain backed the Tutsis. By the same token, the principal target in the USA's attacks on Iraq has not been Saddam and his almost exhauen Saddam and his almost exhausted economy. Saddam has again and again been used as a whipping boy to prove that America is the world's supercop, to warn its great power rivals that no one can mess with the US.
In short, the wars ravaging the world are not simply the result of local nationalist rivalries, nor of the misfortunes unleashed by the world economic crisis, even if both these are real factors. They also have to be understood as the result of growing rivalries between the great imperialist powers, even if this aspect remains largely hidden by all the talk of 'humanitarian' intervention.
At present there is no rival bloc to stand up to the US, so there is no short-term threat of world war. But this does not make the world situation any less dangerous. In the period of the two blocs, there was a certain restraint imposed on local antagonisms by the needs of the bloc. Today the slogan is 'every man for himself': not only are the USA's former allies defying the big boss and dabbling in all kinds of contradictory intrigues and alliances, but the third and fourth rate imperialisms are more and more cocking a snoot at the big powers and going their own way. The escalation of the war in the Congo, where neither France nor America have succeeded in keeping control over the local states and factions, expresses this very clearly.
Capitalism is sinking into a global morass of chaos which can devastate entire continents without actually reaching the stage of world war. And despite the reassuring propaganda of the bourgeoisie, the great powers, the so-called 'western allies', the British, French, Germans, and Americans, do not constitute a civilised barrier to the spread of all this horror across the world and towards the very centre of the system. On the contrary, their role in Africa, ex-Yugoslavia or Iraq shows that they are the main fomentors of chaos and war. And this is above all true for the principal guardian of new world order, the world's gendarme, the USA: less and less able to mobilise the other big powers behind it, it is compelled, as in the Desert Fox operation, to go it alone, in flagrant disregard for the formalities of the UN or even NATO. The US has now become the principal exponent of the philosophy of each for themselves.
For the working class, the sober recognition of the dangers facing mankind should not lead to despair, but to the growing understanding that the war and barbarism now sweeping the world can only be ended when workers' struggles develop into a revolutionary attack on the very heart of the capitalist beast. WR, 6.3.99
IN can be contacted c/o CP 266, Succ "C", Montreal, QC, Canada, H2L 4K1
The Balkan region is sinking hour by hour, day by day, into absolute horror. The infernal war machine has brutally reminded us of the true content of the "New World Order" proclaimed at the beginning of this decade. It's the order of murderers, gangsters, vultures: the order of a class of butchers.
One thing is sure, this conflict has nothing to do with so-called "international law" or humanitarian concerns. It has nothing to do with the defense of culture or of a few monasteries or mosques in Northern Kosovo. This war is not the product of any single leader or state that's more aggressive than the other. It's rather the reality of the aberrant laws and logic of the market - of global capitalism.
Three words can sum up what opposes Albanian and Serbian capitalists in northern Kosovo: coal, iron, and gold. One word fully characterises the humanitarian pretensions of the NATO bosses: Hypocrisy! The same propaganda machine that is shedding crocodicodile tears about the fate of the refugees and ethnic cleansing, pretends to ignore years of even more massive cleansing and massacres in Turkey, in Indonesia, and elsewhere; massacres that they finance and support more often than not.
What the NATO forces are doing in the Balkans is defending economic and strategic interests in the manner of a pack of wolves, each fighting with the other to grab the biggest chunk. War is a continuation of politics...The blood debt that humanity must pay because it still hasn't been able to get rid of this barbaric and obsolete system that is capitalism.
Faced with this unfurling of atrocities, workers' consciousness is still extremely low. The population of each bloc is drowned by a media barrage presenting the other's camp as ogres, fascists, blind terrorists. The intervention of the still weak revolutionary forces is crucial for an even modest development of a class perspective on these deadly events. The "official left" (socialists, pseudo-communists, greens, social democrats) have nothing to offer the working class if not bullets and blood. It's part and parcel of the majority of the governments leading the massacre! The leftist groups give the impression of struggling against the war! But on closer observation, behind the inflammatory rhetoric, there is invariably the defense of nationalist poison (not always the same), of a state or an imperialist camp. Most of the time, , it's in the name of a murky "right to self determination", unrealizable in this period of capitalist decadence. There is no progress possible in the framework of a greater Albania, or a greater Serbia, or an imperialist protectorate. The only possible way out of this escalating chain of war and massacres, of this "New World Order", is that the international working class massively occupies its own terrain, the terrain of the class struggle! It is the way that the workers put an end to the butchery of 1914. And there's no other way out...In this spirit we make it our duty to publish two documents from the two largest organizations of the communist left, the current of real internationalist communism. The two documents are dated March 25, 1999, but they keep at the moment of this writing all their relevance.
Down with the war!
Down with capitalism!
Workers of the world unite!
Internationalist Notes, Montreal April 16, 1999
The ICC held its 13th Congress at the beginning of April, at a time marked by the acceleration of history, as dying capitalism confronts one of the most difficult and dangerous periods of modern history, comparable in gravity to the two world wars, the upsurge of the proletarian revolution in 1917-19, or the Great Depression of 1929. The seriousness of the situationiousness of the situation is determined by sharpening contradictions at every level:
* Imperialist tensions and the development of world disorder;
* A very advanced and dangerous period in the capitalist crisis;
* Attacks on the international proletariat unprecedented since World War II;
* An accelerated decomposition of bourgeois society.
Aware of the enormous responsibility that this situation imposes on the proletariat, the ICC focused the debates of the Congress in order to trace the clear perspectives that this moment of history demands. Only by developing its combativity and its consciousness can the proletariat put forward the revolutionary alternative which alone can ensure the survival of human society. But the most important responsibility rests on the shoulders of the Communist Left, to which the organisations of the proletarian camp belong. They alone can transmit the theoretical and historical lessons which, with the method of marxism, are vital if the revolutionary minorities emerging today are to apply themselves to the construction of the class party of tomorrow. In a sense, like Bilan during the 1930s (1), the Communist Left is today forced to understand an unprecedented historical situation. What is at stake today demands both a profound attachment to the theoretical and historical method of marxism, and the revolutionary audacity to understand situations whions which will not fit the schemas of the past.
With this in mind, the ICC undertook its 13th Congress so as to contribute fully, through its analyses, its positions, and its intervention, to the proletarian response to a serious world situation on the eve of the next millenium.
The international situation: a growing tendency towards chaos
The debates on the analysis and perspectives of the international situation formed the central focus of our 13th Congress (see the resolution on the international situation published in the International Review no.97). It could not be otherwise. The war in the Balkans had broken out only a few days earlier (2). The Congress clearly established that this new war is the most important event on the imperialist scene since the collapse of the Eastern bloc at the end of the 1980s. The present war and its destabilising effects, on both a European and an international level, illustrate once again the dilemma facing the United States today. The tendency to "look after number one", and the increasingly explicit defence of their imperialist interests by the US' one-time allies, force it more and more both to display and demonstrate its immense military superiority. At the same time, this policy can only lead to a further aggravation of the chaos that reigns already in the world situation.
Thus the Congress concluded that the war in ex-Yugoslavia is a further step in tin the development of the irrationality of war within decadent capitalism, directly linked to its phase of decomposition. This confirms a fundamental thesis of marxism: for declining 20th Century capitalism, war has become its mode of existence.
The increase in chaos, the permanent tests of strength between the great powers, is fed by a worsening of the capitalist crisis, which has accelerated since the end of the 1960s when the period of reconstruction following World War II came to an end. At the beginning of the present decade, the ruling class masked the crisis by presenting the collapse of the Eastern bloc as the final victory of capitalism over communism. In reality, the bankruptcy of the East was a key moment in the deepening of the world capitalist crisis. It revealed the bankruptcy of one bourgeois model for managing the crisis: Stalinism. Since then, other "economic models" have bitten the dust one after the other, beginning with the world's second and third industrial powers: Japan and Germany. They were followed by the Asian "tigers" and "dragons" and by the "emerging" economies of Latin America. Russia's open bankruptcy confirmed the inability of Western liberalism to regenerate the countries of Eastern Europe. The ruling class has presented this disaster as severe, but nonetheless limited to a temporary recession due to specific circumstances. In reality, what these countries are suffering is a depression eevery bit as brutal and devastating as that of the 1930s. And this is only the prelude to a new open recession world wide.
As for the class struggle, our congress concluded that despite the weight of decomposition determined by the dead end in which capitalism finds itself, and despite the historic retreat in proletarian combativity and consciousness as a result of the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 - which a disgusting bourgeois campaign identified with the death of communism - the proletariat is not defeated historically. Although time does not play in its favour, in that it is unable to prevent the spreading rot of a decomposing social order, the end of the decade has been marked by signs of a renewed combativity. To confront this the trades unions have had to begin to control, isolate, and sabotage the movements of struggle, and the ruling class has had to revive its "black-out" policy on news of struggles internationally, to avoid spreading the "bad example" of workers' resistance.
Despite all the difficulties that continue to weigh on the working class as a result of the decomposition of capitalist society, the 13th Congress considered that in the long term, there are good reasons to believe that there are many aspects of the situation which are favourable to a new development of consciousness in the working class:
* The advanced state of the crisis itself, pushing the proletariaariat to reflect on the need to confront and go beyond this system;
* The increasingly massive, simultaneous and generalised nature of the attacks, which will pose the need for a generalised class response;
* The omnipresence of war, destroying illusions in a "peaceful" capitalism. The present war in the Balkans, close to the vital centres of capitalism, will have a significant impact on the consciousness of the workers, in that it expresses more sharply than ever the disastrous future that capitalism offers humanity;
* The increasing readiness of an undefeated class to fight against the decline in its living conditions;
* The entry into struggle of a new generation of workers, their combativity intact and able to learn from the generation whose struggles have developed since 1968;
* The emergence of discussion circles or groups of advanced workers, which will try to recover the immediate and historic experience of the workers' movement. In this perspective, the responsibility of the Communist Left will be still greater than in the 1930s, above all in a situation where the ruling class, fully aware of the danger of the proletariat rediscovering the ties to its own history, has developed a whole campaign to denigrate the past and the present of its class enemy.
Worried by the proletarian danger, the ruling class has placed the social-democracy in government inment in 13 out of the 15 countries in the European Union, and in the USA. It needed to revive the electoral mystification and the democratic alternative after long years of right-wing government, especially in key countries like Britain and Germany. But above all, given the need to increase the attacks against the working class, the left has the advantage over the right of proceeding in a much less provocative and more skilful manner.
In conclusion, the 13th Congress made clear that the left's arrival in power in these countries is an expression of the fact that the bourgeoisie is well aware of the danger that a working class conscious of its historic role would represent, which justifies all the preventive actions aimed at limiting the development of its combativity.
The ICC's activities determined by the new period
The 13th Congress carried out an evaluation of the ICC's activities, in the light of an unprecedented, particularly dangerous and difficult, historic situation, at a moment when the great powers are deploying their arsenal of death in the very heart of Europe.
The balance sheet of activities drawn up by the Congress was a positive one. This is nothing to do with self-satisfaction, but an objective and critical evaluation of our activity. The 12th Congress had considered that the ICC should return to an equilibrium in its activities, after more than three years of fighting to restore its its organisational tissue to good health. In accord with the mandate of the 12th Congress, this "return to normal" has been concretised by:
* An opening towards the proletarian political milieu and our contacts, while continuing the combat against parasitic groups and elements;
* A political and theoretical strengthening, with the ability to give our propaganda a historic dimension, basing it on marxism and the experience of the class;
* A strengthening of the "party spirit", which is the only way to strengthen the revolutionary organisation.
The strengthening of the organisation has also been concretised by the ability of the ICC to integrate new militants in seven territorial sections (notably the section in France). The ICC's numerical strengthening (which will continue, since other sympathisers have recently posed their candidature to the organisation), thus gives the lie to the slanders of the parasitic milieu accusing the organisation of being a "sect turned in on itself". Contrary to the denigration of our detractors, the ICC's fight to defend the party spirit has not discouraged those elements searching for class positions, but on the contrary has allowed them to clarify politically, and to come closer to the organisation.
The ICC has developed a serious and serene intervention, inspired by a long-term vision, with a view to a rapprochement with the groups oroups of the proletarian political movement. This activity has been extended to our contacts and sympathisers, whose concerns must be answered seriously and in depth, and who must be able to overcome their misunderstandings and suspicion of organisation. This orientation of the ICC springs not from any megalomania, but from the demands of the situation, which require the proletariat and its revolutionary minorities to assume their responsibilities.
The defence of the proletarian movement has led the ICC to combat the counter-offensive of the parasitic elements, notably by publishing a two-volume pamphlet on The so-called paranoia of the ICC, and by holding an "international" public meeting in Paris in defence of the organisation, joined by several of our contacts. The organisation has thus deepened the question of political parasitism, by adopting and publishing the "Theses on Parasitism", which we believe are a weapon for all the groups of the milieu in understanding this issue historically and theoretically. For the ICC, the defence of the proletarian movement has meant developing a policy of discussion and rapprochement, including common interventions with other groups of the milieu against the bourgeoisie's anti-communist campaigns during the anniversary of the October Revolution. The same approach has been adopted in our intervention towards the emerging political milieu in Russia.
The 13th Congress cononsidered that our intervention towards the "political swamp" should be more determined. This indeterminate "no man's land" between bourgeoisie and proletariat is an inevitable passage for all those elements of the class moving towards an awareness of communism. The organisation must not wait for these elements to "discover" it, it must address and carry the struggle to the bourgeoisie within the swamp itself.
This reinforcement of our vision of the proletarian political milieu is a result of our political and theoretical strengthening. The Congress insisted that this latter should not be considered a separate activity, an extra. In the present situation, and given our long-term perspective, it should form the bedrock of our activity, reflection, and decision.
This positive balance sheet of our activity is thus based on a clearer understanding of the fact that questions of organisation are determinant for all other aspects of our activity. In this sense, the ICC is fully aware that it must continue its efforts to acquire the "party spirit", especially by struggle against the effects of the dominant ideology on militant commitment. During its 25 years of existence, the ICC has paid the price for the break in organic continuity with the revolutionary organisations of the past. Although we consider that this experience has been positive, we know that nothing is gained forever in this domain, above all in the presesent period of decomposition when the organisation's efforts to imbue its functioning with the "party spirit" are constantly undermined by society's tendency towards "look after number one", nihilism, irrationality, which are expressed in organisational life by individualism, suspicion, demoralisation, immediatism, and superficiality.
The 13th Congress set the ICC's activities (press, distribution, public meetings) within the perspective of the sharpening effects of decomposition, but also an acceleration of history with an aggravation of the crisis and a tendency towards renewed combativity in the proletariat. The ICC, and the whole proletarian milieu with it, emerges from this Congress better armed to confront this historic situation.
International Communist Current
1) Review of the Italian Communist Left during the 1930s. See our book on the subject.
2) See our international leaflet, published on the front page of the previous issue of World Revolution and distributed in all the countries where ICC sections exist, as well as Canada, Australia, and Russia.
The bombing of the population of ex-Yugoslavia by the major powers under the aegis of NATO represents a serious escalation of capitalist barbarism. It is accompanied by a cacophony of voices attempting to hide the imperialist nature of the war. There are the voices of those who justify the bombings and try to cover the sordid and bloody self the sordid and bloody self-interest of the major powers under a veil of humanitarianism. There are the voices of those who condemn the NATO attack in order to defend the 'little' ethnic murderer, Milosevic, against the high tech slaughter of the US and European powers. There are the voices of the pacifists who appeal for a peaceful capitalism, as if the spirit of competition weren't an intrinsic aspect of bourgeois rule that leads inevitably to the use of armed force as one country tries to impose its own imperialist interests at the expense of the others. But amid this barrage there is a clear and sane voice raised against the war and all its bourgeois protagonists, that of proletarian internationalism. This position in relation to imperialist war is the foundation stone of the international working class movement and the litmus test for revolutionary organisations. Its intransigent defence marks out the currents of the communist left from those of the radical bourgeoisie, who masquerade as friends of the working class while inviting them to massacre their class brothers in other countries in the name of siding with whichever imperialism they identify as the 'lesser evil'. This song is as old as capitalism! The essence of proletarian internationalism is expressed in the words of the Communist Manifesto, drafted by Marx and Engels in rx and Engels in 1848: "The workers have no country ... Workers of all countries unite!" It affirms the nature of the working class as an international class, no part of which has interests which are in conflict with any other sector in any other country. As such the proletariat has no interest in the victory of either side in wars between capitalist powers for the extension of their spheres of influence and for world domination. On the contrary, it is always expected to pay for the war by dying on the battlefield and by increasing productivity for the war effort. It is always the victim and never a victor while this system of death and poverty has not been overthrown once and for all. When the socialist parties of the Second International betrayed the principle of internationalism by supporting participation in the First World War and played a prominent role in mobilising the workers for the carnage, the International was lost to the working class. But the revolutionary minority regrouped around the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Spartacists in Germany, defended an internationalist position by opposing the war and calling for the workers to defend their own class interests. In the same way, with the onset of the second imperialist carnage, whereas the Trotskyist current passed over to the bourgeois camp by supporting the USSRporting the USSR and the democratic front in the name of opposing fascism, there remained fractions of the Communist Left who maintained the principle of internationalism and have continued to denounce it as an imperialist war. It is the organisations that are descended from this political current that have responded to the NATO bombings by taking up the only consistent and communist position: - condemning the carnage as an imperialist war; - calling on the working class not to defend any of the bourgeois factions involved; - condemning, implicitly or explicitly, the demands of the leftists for the workers to defend the 'lesser evil' or 'self-determination in Kosovo' and, - against the myth of pacifism, affirming that only the working class can offer an alternative to capitalist barbarism through its own struggle as a revolutionary class, whose historic destiny is to destroy the exploitation of the bourgeoisie and create a new society without classes and without exploitation. The titles of the leaflets produced by the various groups of the communist left, immediately after the start of the bombing of Kosovo, testify to the unity, in action, of the internationalists in the denunciation of the war (1): "Capitalism means imperialism, imperialism means war" (IBRP); "The Kosovo war "The Kosovo war is a war of capital" (Programma Comunista); "No to imperialist intervention in Yugoslavia! Down with all nationalism and all bourgeois oppression!" (Le Proletaire); "The real opposition to military intervention and war lies in the class struggle of the proletariat, in its class and internationalist reorganisation against all forms of bourgeois oppression and nationalism" (Il Comunista); "Down with the imperialist war" (Il Partito Comunista); "Capitalism is war, war on capitalism!" (ICC).
Although there is unity on the denunciation of the war, there is not complete agreement between all parts of the communist left on how to analyse the general imperialist situation. However, the leaflets show a global agreement of these different organisations on the fact that the aerial bombardment by NATO expresses an attempt by the American bourgeoisie to impose its hegemony and to respond to the attempt to contest its authority, and, in particular, to block the efforts of European powers to play an autonomous imperialist role. Whatever the differences or nuances of analysis, there is unity among all the diverse organisations of the Communist Left on opposition to the imperialist war, which must play an essential role in the deal role in the development of proletarian consciousness on the bankruptcy of this system of exploitation. This clearly demarcates the internationalist position from those of the left of the bourgeoisie with all its radical and perfidious language intended to trap the working class. This is why the ICC has written to all the internationalist groups quoted above, on the 29th March, to propose to meet "in order to elaborate a common call against the imperialist war, against all the lies of the bourgeoisie, against all the pacifist campaigns and for the proletarian perspective of the overthrow of capitalism." "This is the first time for half a century that the main imperialist gangsters have conducted a war in Europe itself, which means the principle theatre of the two world wars and at the same time the main proletarian concentration in the world. This is the gravity of the present situation. It imposes on communists the responsibility to unite their forces in order to make the loudest possible voice for internationalist principles, in order to give these principles the greatest possible impact that our weak forces will allow." With the development of the situation after several weeks of war, such an appeal is still up to date. ICC 23.4.99
1. The organisations referred to are: - IBRP (International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party): Battaglia Comunista, CP 1753, 20100 Milano, Italy and Communist Workers Organisation, PO Box 338, Sheffield, S3 9YX - International Communist Party: Programma Comunista, IPC casella postale 962, 20101 Milano, Italy - International Communist Party: Le Proletaire, Editions Programme, 3 rue Basse Combalot, 69007 Lyon, France - Il Comunista, CP 10835, 20110 Milano, Italy International Communist Party (Il Partito Comunista): Edizioni PC, casella postale 1157, 50100 Florence, Italy and Communist Left, ICP Editions, PO Box 52, Liverpool, L69 7AL
The nail bombs planted in Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho were vicious attacks aimed at terrorising the population. Such atrocities are typical of the vile ways that the servants of capitalism use in attempts to intimidate people and make them live in fear.
In denouncing this terrorist brutality we reject entirely any claim to sympathy from all those mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie who have rushed to deliver their condemnations as utter hypocrisy. Jack Straw said of the Soho bomb that "this is a terrible outrage committed by people with no humanity". William Hague said it was "appalling and barbaric". After the Brick Lane bomb John Tyndall of the extreme-right British National Party said that those responsible should be hanged.
What hypocrisy! Not just from Tyndall, but from all the other voices of the bourgeoisie. They pretend they care about what happens to people on the streets of London as British aircraft continue bombing raids on Iraq and Yugoslavia. We entirely reject any claims from the bourgeoisie that it has 'sympathy' with the victims of the atrocities - whether in London, Belgrade or Baghdad. We remind the working class in Britain particularly that the British bourgeoisie, with a long history as "people with no humanity", has been at the forefront of the development and sale of armaments, particularly in the fields of nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.
The British bourgeoisie also has a long history of using fascism to justify its actions. During the Second World War the 'fight against fascism' and the 'defence of democracy' were used in the mobilisation in the Allied countries against the Axis powewers. Today, with the bombing of Iraq and Yugoslavia, Saddam and Milosevic are portrayed as dictatorial, anti-democratic figures who pursue the same sort of policies as Hitler with their persecution of, respectively, the Kurds and the Kosovan Albanians.
On the 'home front' the propaganda against the nail bombers doesn't only focus on their disgusting weapons, it depicts them as enemies of democracy. In the immediate aftermath of the Soho bombing the Labour Left, in particular, used their antifascist credentials in the defence of the capitalist state. Paul Boateng denounced those who were intent on attacking democracy and insisted that no one could be allowed to overthrow the democratic capitalist state. Ken Livingstone called for the beefing up of the state and the reorientation of the security services. They all made it quite clear that anyone who challenged bourgeois democracy - not just fascists - would be subject to the full force of the capitalist state.
Who benefits from the bombs?
In WR 222 we wrote about the use of the Macpherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence and how the bourgeoisie would use its report to strengthen the police and other parts of the state's apparatus of repression. It is useful to recall the very first of the inquiry's 70 recommendations which expressed the need of the bourgeoisie "to increase trust and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities".
In the aftermath of the first two nail bombs there was a widespread increase in overt policing. The complaints of liberals and 'community leaders' against the police were that they have not done enough, that they didn't do anything to prevent the Brick Lane bomb after warnings were received, that they have done more following Jill Dando's murder than they ever did when Stephen Lawrence was killed. When asked to adopt a higher profile the police don't need to be asked twice. But the strengthening of the state doesn't only mean increasing the number of police in the street. It has also meant drawing attention to the more than a million CCTV cameras watching public spaces in Britain. In addition, the police, their various liaison committees and their allies among 'community leaders' have appealed for people to be "eyes and ears" for the police.
So, the repressive powers of the capitalist state have gained the most from the nail bomb campaign. What then of the various fascist groups that have been blamed or claimed responsibility for the bombs, such as Combat 18 and its split-off the White Wolves? Combat 18 - a splinter from the BNP - was lead for some time by a Special Branch informer. From the first claims concerning the Brixton bomb there has been much coverage concerning the infiltratation of fascist groups by security services, Special Branch, Searchlight magazine etc. The press talk of 'infiltration', but the example of Northern Ireland show what that amounts to in practice. Various trials of loyalist 'infiltrators' have shown that the security services' agents are not passive observers but actually call the shots. The most dramatic example of the work of British government agents was the co-ordination in 1974 of the loyalist bomb attacks in Dublin and Monaghan which brought the worst carnage in the last 30 years in Ireland. This ensured the strengthening of repressive powers in the Irish Republic.
In Britain we do not need to delve too deep into the murky world of the fascist right to see that the degree of state infiltration probably means a high degree of state control of nazi groups. Today nail bombs have been used to intimidate and frighten the population and to strengthen the democratic state. The apparatus of the state is being prepared, above all, for future repression against the working class, its struggles and revolutionary minorities. The terrorism of the fascists and the repressive powers of the democratic state are two complimentary weapons of decadent capitalism. Bo 1/5/99
What is the real reason for the NATO bombing, the daily deluge of fire that is falling on Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo? What is the real reason for this war which, for the first time since the end of the Second World War, involves the direct military presence of the great powers on European soil, only a few hours plane ride away fromours plane ride away from London?
We are being told that this monstrous barbarity is a 'humanitarian' action aimed at defending and even saving the Kosovan people.
It was the same with the Gulf war: we were told that the massive military intervention by the great powers was the way to help populations who were being crushed under a dictator's heel. The media and the politicians pretend to be indignant about the horrors of the 'ethnic cleansing' ordered by Milosevic. They pretend to be moved by the discovery of new mass graves in Kosovo. They shed crocodile tears about the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the massacres, parked like cattle in filthy camps where women, children and the old wait for aid or for provisional visas, daily falling prey to hunger, cold and disease.
But the 'humanitarian' argument put forward by the governments and the media is nothing but a hateful lie.
The reality is that the military intervention unleashed by the great powers in ex-Yugoslavia is dictated purely and simply by their sordid imperialist interests. Behind the facade of unity between the main powers involved in the conflict, each national bourgeoisie is playing its own game, each imperialist shark is trying to defend its own sphere of influence or to undermine those of its rivals in a Balkans region which has been a strategic bone of contention for over a century.
The real question for them is which imperialist pist power will win the prize and succeed in establishing its control over the Kosovo protectorate which will result form the eventual dividing up of this territory - just as in 1996, the question was which one of them would draw the most benefit from the carving up of Bosnia. (see the article below).
The hypocrisy and cynicism of the great powers
The real motive for this war is neither the search for peace in Europe, nor any defence of the 'rights of man', Neither is it an attempt by the great powers to call a halt to chaos, as bourgeois propaganda claims.
The reality is that the 'democratic' powers don't give a damn for the Kosovo population. They care nothing about the massacres or the fate of the refugees. This disgusting contempt for the populations who are being taken hostage and victimised by the war is shown in the very language of the media, the politicians and the military men, who talk about 'collateral damage' or 'accidents' when referring to the thousands of civilian casualties - among both Serbs and Albanian refugees - already caused by the NATO bombing.
The same contempt is shown by 'socialist' or 'democratic' politicians like Clinton, Blair and Jospin who call on us to send food and blankets to the refugee camps, but who make sure that only a few token Kosovars are admitted into America, Britain or France.
Their hypocrisy about the 'ethnic cleansing' is no less nauseaauseating. The American and British governments have been up to their necks in supporting regimes who have carried out similar kinds of massacres, in Indonesia against the Chinese, or in Turkey against the Kurds (Turkey is meanwhile an honoured partner in the anti-Milosevic alliance). And as for France: a report - "No witness must survive" - has just been published (see Le Monde, 2 4.99) which confirms that the genocide in Rwanda carried out by the Hutu government - which left 500,000 Tutsis dead in 1994 - had been planned since February 1993 with the complicity of the French.
This vile double-standard applies to the Milosevic regime itself. Today he is the 'evil dictator of Belgrade', on a par with the 'butcher of Baghdad'. But in 1991 the USA, France and Britain all backed Milosevic as a way of blocking German ambitions in Croatia. And Britain and France continued to back him covertly against the growing presence of the US, which had switched to supporting Bosnia. Meanwhile the ethnic cleansing was being carried out by all the local nationalist cliques - Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian - all of whom were supported by the great powers in one way or another.
A campaign of intoxication directed against the working class
But what about the increasingly numerous criticisms of the way the intervention is being carried out that are being raised by the media and by bourgeois politicians? We are toltold for example that Milosevic's ability to hold out has been underestimated, or conversely that NATO overestimated the capacity of the bombing to dissuade Milosevic. Or again that the intervention took place too late because Serbia had been planning the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo for three months.
These arguments actually show that the cynicism and hypocrisy of the democratic bourgeoisies knows no limits. The 'sacrifice' of the Kosovo population was not only foreseen but also required by the great powers. For two years the great powers have been fully informed about this repression against the Kosovo Albanians and they knew very well that in reprisal for the bombing the repression would be stepped up even more. Indeed it's thanks to the suffering of these populations that the 'Allied Forces' have to a large extent made public opinion (according to the polls) more in favour of military intervention, whereas at the beginning it had been somewhat reticent about the bombing. And what's more, it's these very 'unforeseen difficulties' that will be used as a pretext for further increasing the forces and material being deployed in the region.
If NATO waited so long to intervene, even though the repression has been going on for over two years, this has nothing to do with any scruples about unleashing war and destruction. It was solely because most of the 'allies', in particular r the USA, were happy to let Milosevic do their dirty work by subduing the Kosovar rebellion, and thus blocking the ambitions of their German rival - Germany being the power most interested in the independence of Kosovo and the project of a Greater Albania. This is the same method used during the Gulf war, when the American bourgeoisie first cynically pushed for the rebellion by the Shi'ite and Kurdish minorities in Iraq, and then left them open to being crushed by Saddam Hussein, since the last thing the US wanted was a Kurdish state or another pro-Iranian state in the region.
In fact, the whole current campaign about the 'errors' or 'difficulties' of NATO, on the 'ineffectiveness of air strikes' and their 'inability' to make Milosevic back down, has above all the aim of conditioning public opinion, of psychologically preparing the population in the central countries, and the working class in particular, for a new escalation in this imperialist conflict: in short, for the land offensive. It's true that this widespread questioning of NATO also expresses the efforts of America's European rivals to undermine the absolute authority of the White House. But at the same time all the national bourgeoisies have a need to make the proletariat swallow the pill of military escalation. This is why they are already announcing that 'this war will be long and bloody' and are artificially inflating the number of men needed for the groound combats so that there will be feelings of relief when the actual numbers are announced. The bourgeoisie needs to put so much effort into preparing the terrain because it knows that the only obstacle to the acceleration of its march towards war is the proletariat of the central capitalist countries.
The working class will very soon be faced with the fact that with the deployment of the land armies, thousands of sons and daughters of workers will be killed in the fighting. And it's also mainly the working class that will pay the colossal bill for the war. When we know that the cost of the war is already being estimated at $200 million a day (half of that being borne by the US alone), we can imagine what new 'sacrifices' the bourgeoisie is going to demand, and how much the increase in military budgets will mean a decrease in social spending.
But the working class is not merely a victim of war. It's the only internationalist class in society. The only social force which, by fighting tooth and nail against the redoubled attacks by the ruling class on its living conditions, can hold back the slide into military barbarism. It's the only class historically capable of destroying this system of death and opening the door to a different future for human society.
CB 22.4.99
Right from the start of the bombing of Yugoslavia the left has held meetings and demonstrations around the theme of "Stop the War". From the interventions of militants and sympathisers of the ICC across the country it is clear that these events, far from being against the imperialist slaughter, have been in favour of war, usually on the side of British imperialism's traditional ally Serbia, but sometimes in defence of the KLA. A report received LA. A report received from a close sympathiser of the ICC about a meeting held in Leicester gives a very good sense of a typical celebration of warmongering by the left.
Organised by the Trotskyists of the Socialist Workers Party with assistance from the Stalinists of the Communist Party of Britain and contributions from the pacifists of CND, the meeting successfully downplayed any of the supposed differences between the different currents of the left.
The SWP "applauded the historic contribution of CND" (presumably support for every war in which nuclear weapons have not been deployed) and its "tradition of good people against war". A Stalinist read from a John Pilger article. Someone from Scargill's Socialist Labour Party told the assembly "not to feel guilty about supporting Serbia" because "supporting Milosevic doesn't mean supporting Serbian nationalism". The Indian Workers' Association also came to support the Serbian cause.
On the side of the KLA came Workers' Liberty and Workers' Aid for Kosovo. Both support the arming of the KLA and the former thought that Milosevic was a fascist. While there was some friction between the pro-Serb and pro-KLA groups their mutual appeal to "the basic first principle: national self-determination" meant that differences were kept within the bounds of the "community of the left".
During the discussion the same themes continued: "highly selective illustrations of the human cost; Belgrade's actions portrayed as purely defensive - or the regrettable, but understandable response to being in a corner."
The star turns of the meeting were two people from Serbia. One man gave an "oath to the meeting that (after finishing his PhD) he would return to his motherland and give his life - if necessary - for the 'holy soil of Serbia'". The meeting greeted this with great applause. A Serbian woman "bore witness to the Albanian atrocities against Serbian civilians". This was greeted with "near-jubilation".
Understandably, when our sympathiser intervened against the spirit of meeting to denounce the social-democratic, Stalinist and Trotskyist traditions which all have long histories of support for imperialist wars there were cries of "shame" and later "some intimidatory remarks from the SWP". However, as we have found everywhere, there were those who were "interested in the left communist tradition" and discussing the issues raised by imperialist war. This is not surprising as the function of the left (through meetings, demonstrations and parallel union campaigns) is to divert workers' opposition to war into pacifism or support for one of the forces engaged in imperialist conflict.
There has been a real development of workers' militancy in recent weeks. Strikes have broken out in all sorts of places against the violent attacks directed at the working class. Numerous sectors have been affected: private and public, industry and sed public, industry and services. To refer only to the ones that got some mention in the daily press: the strike at Alcatel against 12,000 job cuts; the strike at Elf in Pau against the plan to get rid of 1250 jobs; strikes at Nice airport against the introduction of short-term contracts; a series of strikes against the introduction of the 35-hour week; at Elf Atochem, at Cegetel, but also in cleaning firms; in bus companies, food and distribution. Walk-outs at Peugeot against the new shifts involved in the 35-hour week. The TV and the daily papers have said nothing about these last struggles. Or about the numerous strikes that have been breaking out on an almost daily basis in the hospitals and the postal service against job cuts and worsening conditions of work.
In fact, there is a real media black-out about these numerous scattered strikes, an attempt to hide the general character of the discontent throughout the working class. And when they are obliged to talk about them, as in the case of the strike that broke out at the SNCF (national railway) at the end of April, they do all they can to present them as isolated phenomena, as purely "sectional" movements motivated by "egoistic" interests which run counter to those of other workers. With the rail strike in particular, they have tried to whip up "public opinion" against them by talking abut the growing anger of the rail passengers.
Demands common to o the whole working class
Not only was the SNCF strike no isolated case, but, far from involving any specific "sectional" interests, it was an expression of the same mobilisation against the Aubry law on the 35-hour week which has developed in many other places. Mobilisations which show that the working class has today understood that the 35-hour week is no "gift" from a benevolent left wing government, but a violent attack against wages and working conditions.
The repulsive propaganda of the bourgeoisie has presented the railway workers as being a "privileged" sector who "only have to work three hours a day" (!) and who have "refused to do just 16 minutes more". This is in continuity with the gross lies of the recent campaign against the civil servants, who couldn't be given the 35-hour week because they supposedly only work 30 to 32 hours a week already!
The truth is much cruder. The content of the agreement between the SNCF management and the CGT and CFDT unions is really a violent attack on the railway workers:
· the calculation of the working day has indeed gone up from 7 hours 30 minutes to 7 hours 46, but during some periods the average day can go up to 8 hours 15 minutes. In other words it's the classic ploy of annualised hours;
· the extra days off granted "in compensation" has meant a loss of bonuses. If we remember that they can make make up to 40% of gross wages, we can see what this means!
· as for the supposed great step forward of the "massive creation of jobs", this is even more of a con. The "Communist" minister Gayssot proudly announced the figure of 23,500-25,000 new jobs in three years. Except that you also have to take into account nearly 20,000 departures over the same period and the regularisation of 3000 short-term contracts. The final tally is about one new job for each rail depot.
During the transport strikes last October, the demand for new jobs was at the center of the workers' anger, despite the attempts of the bourgeoisie to turn this into a matter of safety and nothing else (see WR 220). At the SNCF, where more than 81,000 jobs have been cut over 13 years, the minister and the SNCF management promised that the demand for new jobs would be taken into account in the framework of the 35-hour week. Now we can see the results.
This is why the anger has again exploded at the SNCF.
The unions' division of labour to sabotage the struggle
In implementing this attack, the left-wing government has relied on the overt complicity of the big union federations, the CGT and CFDT. On 15 April, the CGT launched a huge campaign in the SNCF, singing the praises of the agreement it had just concocted behind the railway workers' backs. This was in the same mold as the other agreements about the 35-hour week whek which the CGT, along with other unions, has pushed through in other sectors, such as textiles.
And when the strike broke out, the declarations of the two unions against the strikers were even more virulent than those of the management: "It is inadmissible that the 2.5% of the workforce involved in this strike could hold the SNCF hostage and put the whole enterprise in danger" said the CFDT's rail leader on the TV, while the CGT made a campaign around the idea that the strike was "sectional and the work of a minority".
At the beginning, therefore, it was only the FGAAC union (the "autonomous" drivers' union) which officially supported the strike, launching an appeal for its affiliated drivers. In the division of labour between the unions, the specific role of the FGAAC was to present the strike as being motivated by the "specific interests" of the drivers, who, according to the FGAAC, have been "left out" of a deal supposedly favourable to other categories within the SNCF. This was itself an enormous lie. This appeal for a strike from a minority union which peddles a very corporatist line was an excellent way of isolating the striking railway workers and imprisoning them in a minority struggle. This obviously made it easier for the other unions to oppose the strike precisely by pointing the finger at the corporatism of the FGAAC.
The manoeuvre, however, was not a complete success. As Liberation put it ot on 29 April, "the movement seems to be drawing in more people than expected" (by the FGAAC representatives themselves). On the 30th, the strike was followed by 26% of the 18,000 drivers, as against 19% the day before. Furthermore, rather than restricting itself just to the drivers, the mobilisation quickly began to involve other rail workers, notably at Sotteville (see the leaflet "Draw the lessons" ) but also at other depots like Marseilles.
The failure of the division of labour between the FGAAC and the other unions obliged the latter to change tactics. In numerous places the local delegates and sections of the CGT were forced to run after the strikers and rally to the movement while at the same time doing what they could to hold it in check, in the name of "the good points of the agreement". At the May 1st demonstration the embarrassed CGT leader Thibaut declared: "I neither approve nor disapprove of such a movement_it can be that some personnel express a different point of view from that of other categories", which was another way of presenting the strikers' demands as being opposed to those of the majority of railway workers (whereas in fact they were only opposed to_ the interests defended by the CGT).
On 3rd may, Sud-Rail and FO, also minority unions, launched an official call for a strike themselves, this time for all categories. In fact the extension to other categories had already begun, without waiaiting for them. The movement continued to widen.
On 4th May, the CGT itself announced a strike_for the following week! The aim was clear: to deal a death blow to the movement towards extension. And the manoeuvre succeeded: in a number of places, the local CGT sections used this pretext to get people back to work, arguing that the CGT's appeal was more "unitary" and more "majority" than the actual movement.
To strike as a particular category, or to reject the strike in the name of "unity": this was the false choice that the unions, through their division of labour, proposed to the SNCF workers.
There was also a division of roles within the unions, between the "base" and the "leadership" of the big federations, notably the CGT. Contrary to what the "radical" trade unionists of Lutte Ouvriere pretend, the movement didn't extend thanks to the local appeals of the CGT in various depots. On the contrary, it was because the pressure from the workers in these depots was so strong that the CGT sections were forced to adopt a more radical language than the national leadership. The union "base" has the job of sticking to the movement the better to obstruct it from the inside, to prevent the strikers from taking real control of the extension of the movement through their own general assemblies. Instead of that, the policy of the CGT base was above all to call on the workers to "put pressure" on the leadership so so that it would organise the broadening of the strike.
What lessons?
The truth is that when the unions rally to a strike which threatens to escape their control, this never reinforces the struggle. It can only serve to strangle and sabotage it. The unions are only prepared to call for wide movements when they are certain that they can control it from start to finish and render it powerless. This is exactly what happened in December 1995.
Union sabotage managed to lead the SNCF strike to defeat. But there are defeats which are rich in lessons for the future. And the essential lesson of the strike which has just taken place at the SNCF is that the workers can only rely on themselves. This means that they must take charge of their own struggles, through general assemblies that are not answerable to the unions.
Against the corporatist propaganda of the unions, which always seeks to enclose the struggle through divisive demands, workers have to put forward unifying demands, those which other fractions of the working class can take as their own.
Workers cannot wait for the unions to organise the extension of the movement; they have to do it themselves, by sending massive delegations to other workers.
And this extension doesn't mean just going to workers in the same sector, but sending delegations to all the enterprises of a given region, and calling on all workers to join the struggle.
In the last issue of WR we carried an article on the railway strike in France. This strike took place against a background of growing discontent and agitation in numerous sectors of the working class. This movement was particularly significant in that it has developed during the Balkans war and despite the campaigns of the ruling class to strengthen the ideology of "national unity" around"national unity" around the war effort. In early June, there was a further expression of this combative mood in the working class: a spontaneous strike around the question of safety in the metro, which rapidly spread to the whole of the metro system and the urban railway in Paris, and also to transport workers in Marseilles and Lyon. Although quickly isolated by the unions, the speed of the workers' reaction was above all an expression of an exasperation with deteriorating wages and working conditions that is common to wide layers of the working class.
In May as well, nurses throughout Denmark came out on strike for higher wages despite the nurses' union recommending acceptance of the government's offer. The government was obliged to pass a new law to make this strike illegal and force the nurses back to work in a very angry frame of mind. Schoolteachers were also striking for wage increases at the same time.
Below, we publish two articles written by our comrades in America which give further evidence of this slow, uneven but real revival of the international class struggle. Of particular significance is the article on the New York transport workers which gives a concrete example of how minorities of workers today are beginning to pose some very profound questions about the nature and role of the trade unions. Such developments are harbingers of the much wider and more conscious class movements thahat are on the agenda for the future.
Despite 'war fever', workers defend themselves against capitalist attacks
The New York City municipal unions have stepped up their campaign to re-establish their credibility in the wake of scandals that have rocked municipal trade unions (we originally reported on this in Internationalism 106, publication of the ICC in the US). A major corruption scandal involving a fraudulent ratification vote for the last contract had thrown District Council 37 (a cluster of local unions in the huge New York City public sector workforce) into turmoil. Getting rid of the most blatant corruption was important for the ruling class, in order to give the appearance that the unions could be relied upon to defend the workers interests.
Of course this changed nothing in the fundamental role of the unions and their relationship to the government. It was all simply a ploy to pre-empt the danger of workers taking the struggles into their own hands in the period ahead.
Following the scandal, the newly installed DC 37 reform leader joined with leaders of the Teachers and Hospital Workers unions to call for a massive rally at City Hall on May 12th. This demonstration was designed to lay the groundwork for union negotiations in the autumn for new city ity contracts. In this sense the rally did not express a dynamic directly stemming from the workers themselves, but rather a move by the unions to prepare the basis for their control of the struggle in the months to come. This was especially necessary because the last corrupt contract saddled workers with a two year wage freeze, and anger is running high among municipal workers, and a major effort was necessary to convince workers to put confidence in the unions.
The demonstration mobilized a massive crowd, estimated at 25,000-50,000 participants, making it the largest such demonstration in more than 15 years. While it was firmly controlled by the unions, it was clear that the workers were angry and ready to fight. The belt-tightening rhetoric of the past few years seems to have lost credibility with the news of a 2 billion dollar budget surplus for the city government.
The demonstration occurred right in the midst of the NATO war in the Balkans. This is significant. Far too often in the past, the working class has been intimidated or cajoled into putting aside their needs and struggles, and sacrifice for the 'good of the nation.' It was clear that the thousands of workers who demonstrated that afternoon had no hesitation to express their need for wage increases even while the nation was at war. Even more significantly, workers at the rally were anxious to accept the ICC's leafletet denouncing the war, many who had passed by came back to ask for copies when they learned it was an anti-war leaflet. These workers saw no contradiction between a leaflet against the war and their demands for higher wages.
Another aspect of the current campaign to spruce up the municipal unions involves stepped-up base unionist activities. Left union bureaucrats with close links to the Association for Union Democracy, a group with social democratic roots, have pushed for greater democracy in the unions, seeking to put new, more 'radical' leadership in place. Their message is that workers can't win unless there are truly democratized unions. This group includes two of the 'honest' local union presidents within DC 37 who helped to expose the corruption by the former council leadership.
A year ago such elements organized the Committee for Real Change (CRC) within DC 37. Lately, they have expanded the group citywide, to include all 'reform' minded bureaucrats and some leftists, such as those affiliated with the International Socialist Organization (the US affiliate of the British SWP). Thus we see that leftists, who are at the extreme left of the ruling class, are preparing to play a back-stop role when workers start to see the manipulative role the 'reform' unionists will pursue.
The CRC is completely following behind official union leadership. It posed nd nothing different from the union leaders in regard to the May 12th demo. The CRC just focused on mobilizing workers to go to the demo. In the future it is possible it that will pose more of an alternative, perhaps as ready-made convenors of a so-called 'co-ordination' should the struggle break out in the open .
The CRC's link to the social democratic Association for Union Democracy (AUD) is instructive of how manipulative the ruling class can be. In June 1998, the AUD organized a conference where reform-minded local presidents within DC 37 decided to organize the CRC. This was before the DC 37 corruption scandal broke. In January of this year, the AUD organized another conference, attended by people from as many as 17 different local unions, from a broad range of public sector categories. This newly expanded CRC held a meeting, attended by about 200 people on the Friday night prior to the City Hall demo. It was not a real workers meeting. Just a lot of speeches by reform officials, with 15 minutes allowed for discussion at the end, after most people had left.
The rise of 'militant' new union leaders in the public sector in NY is therefore the fruit of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the AUD and assorted leftists, not a reflection of ferment within the proletariat. These new union leaders are being put in place to help the ruling class manipulate the growing discontent amomong the proletariat and contain the struggles which will inevitably arise.
New York transport workers grapple with union question
In late May about 25 New York City transit workers were sitting in the waiting room of a transit authority medical clinic and talking about the upcoming contract fight. It was a just a week after the big demonstration at City Hall, where an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 municipal workers had participated in a union-called rally, and just two days after the transit union announced that it was demanding a 30% raise over three years in the new contract next November, and threatening a strike (which would be illegal) on New Year's Eve (which coming on the eve of the new millennium would be sure to isolate strikers). The workers' discussion was quite animated and polarized around two guys who argued opposing views on a key issue facing not only transit workers, but all workers: the union question. For over two hours. the discussion focused on the union, good or no good.
An older worker defended the union, insisting that workers had to go to the union meetings and participate in union activities. In general people jumped on him for this view. Several women talked negatively about the union, how it never helped workers. The main opponent of the union was a younger wr worker who said that the union leaders are like management, and we can't trust them. He said they are corrupt and the question is not to change union leaders, because anyone who gets elected will become the same.
One woman talked about the necessity for workers to get together to discuss what to do about the contract. One worker suggested taking the union money and renting Madison Square Garden for a big meeting. An older worker said he had been active in the union in the past and was ashamed of what he had done. He described how the executive board had manipulated the union meetings, and explained that union meetings mean nothing, that everything is decided elsewhere.
The union defender would not be swayed. He insisted that there was no alternative to the union, but the younger worker attacked again. He said the solution was to dismantle the union. If you have a building that is rotten, you don't repair it, you blow it up, he said. Then there was a debate about going on strike and fears related to the penalties of the Taylor law, a New York State law prohibiting public sector strikes, which was used in 1980 after the last transit strike to fine workers two days pay for every day on strike. Again the question was raised about renting Madison Square Garden, but the young guy said we don't need to do that. He said we have different shops where people can meet and elect two or ththree guys and send them as delegates and to get together. A woman worker suggested that the people in the shops could write down what they wanted the delegates to say.
This episode offers a glimpse of the process by which the working class comes to consciousness, how it grapples with the meaning of its past experiences in struggle and draws out lessons for the future. Even without the intervention of revolutionaries, the workers who discussed those two hours in that waiting room clearly raised the question of the anti-proletarian nature of the unions, the need to push them aside, to take the struggle into their own hands, to create their own autonomous organs of struggle, with elected, mandated delegates. The bourgeois media tells us there is no such thing as the class struggle anymore, that everyone is middle class, except for the very poor. Communism, they tell us is dead and gone. But the discussion that happened that day in May is a clear sign that the perspective for the future is still one of class confrontation.
"A victory for democracy", proof that this was a "just war", a war for the rights of man in international relations. From Blair to Clinton via Kofi Anan, this is how, after three months of butchery, the representatives of the western bourgeoisie are describing their operation in Yugoslavia. Having destroyed and slaughtered onoyed and slaughtered on a grand scale, they are now claiming to be instituting "peace", guaranteeing the "safety" of peoples, and reconstructing the ruins.
Lies!
Lies, because the military intervention in the Balkans was never motivated by the "humanitarian" desire to stop Serbian tyranny in Kosovo. In reality, it was the expression of the deadly imperialist rivalries between the great powers, however much they kept up the mask of "unity" during the bombings.
Lies because hardly had the "liberation" of Kosovo been proclaimed, than the first "post-war" deaths came about, and a new wave of refugees - this time, Serbians - had reached figures of tens of thousands.
Lies because NATO's "ending" of Milosevic's ethnic cleansing will merely change its form, this time through the partition of Kosovo, like what we saw at the end of the fighting in Bosnia.
Lies because these "peace" accords, which actually consist of a strong-arm intervention by all the "civilised" bourgeoisies, will only prepare the ground for new confrontations. Kosovo is being occupied by 50,000 soldiers, armed and equipped to the teeth, there to defend the interests of the different countries which sent them, and manipulating the various local cliques to serve their ends. Kosovo today is nothing but a powder keg.
The whole history of the 20th century shows that "peace accords" only pave the way to even more savage conflicts. Let's justs just look at recent history. The Dayton accord was supposed to pacify the region of ex-Yugoslavia. In fact since the signing of this deal we have seen the different great powers deliberately stirring the ingredients which formed the most recent Yugoslav war.
And as the capitalist world sinks deeper and deeper into decay, even when a brief halt to hostilities is called in one area, wars and threats of war raise their heads elsewhere. At the very time that these powers were fighting to impose their "order" in the Balkans, relations between India and Pakistan degenerated into open conflict, carrying the real threat of nuclear war. At the same time the two Koreas have been rattling sabres at each other, especially after two North Korean gunboats were sunk by the South Korean navy. The war in former Zaire, which involves eight African countries and has sown death and famine on a huge scale, continues unabated. In the Middle East, hardly had the new Labour prime minister declared his intention to continue the "peace process" begun by Rabin, than Israeli planes were launching murderous strikes in southern Lebanon in response to actions by Hizbollah.
This is the real face of this decomposing system. This is the reality of the capitalist world that our leaders are so keen to hide from us.
Peace under capitalism is impossible. The more this senile social order plunges into an economic crisis that has no solutionion, the more it will resort to massacres and militarism. The capitalist system has long proved its bankruptcy. Only the working class, by developing and unifying its struggles in all countries, can offer humanity any future. ICC
Imperialist vultures squabble over their prey
Milosevic's capitulation, and the deployment of NATO forces in Kosovo, marks the end of one phase of the Balkans war, but not of the war itself. The "peace" accord in Yugoslavia has in fact brought the tensions between the great powers over this region to a level not seen since the world wars. It in no way implies any let-up in their imperialist rivalries, which are the real reason for wars in general and this war in particular.
The main protagonists of the NATO intervention against Serbia knew that they would have to see to the end the operation launched by the USA, despite their bitterness about being subjected to American leadership. If they hadn't taken part in it, they would have risked losing their places in the international arena and losing all influence in the Balkans.
The great powers divide up Kosovo
The dividing up of Kosovo into protectorates run by the main powers that took part in the operation (USA, France, Britain, Germany and Italy) is the reward fard for all their efforts, but not everyone has got what they would have liked.
Britain has taken the lion's share by occupying the central and most extensive zone, which also includes the capital Pristina. This dominant role vis-…-vis the other powers reflects the power and efficiency of its land forces, which have benefited from being part of a professional army for many years. Britain's military strength, which would have given it the leading role in the land war had it taken place, also enables it to assume overall command of the other four K-for contingents. Its own contingent, at 13,000, is the biggest of all four. Thanks to this success, Britain can now play the role of a major European power at the forefront of 'solving crises" (see the article opposite).
Germany has obtained an area equivalent to that of the US and France; its force of 8,500 is second only to Britain's. This constitutes an undoubted imperialist success for Germany. For the first time since the second world war, it has deployed an army in a "foreign" crisis without raising the spectre of Nazism, either at home or abroad. Germany has also won a considerable diplomatic success, since it has played a very active part in the negotiations which led to Milosevic's surrender. The strengthening of Germany's influence in the world can now be based on a diplomacy that is all the more effective for having an armed force at its disposalal. But Germany's gains don't end there. Through its direct military presence, it is strengthening the sphere of influence it has procured through its special relationship with Croatia.
Italy, which has hardly enjoyed any military victories since the beginning of the century, must be very satisfied with the protectorate it has obtained in Kosovo. This was its reward for allowing NATO to use its territory as a base for the bombing of Serbia.
France has managed to pull something out of the fire. The protectorate it has been given in the north of Kosovo will be some sort of compensation for what it has lost by taking part in the war against Serbia, which has always been the essential outpost of its influence in the Balkans.
The part given to the US, equivalent to that of the European powers, but less than Britain's, is highly significant. There is a huge gap between, on the one hand, its crushing aerial superiority, which was clearly demonstrated during the war and which was the decisive factor in bringing Milosevic to his knees; and, on the other hand, the very modest "reward" it has obtained as a result. Such a situation very sharply illustrates the tendency towards the decline of US world leadership. From now on the USA's crushing aerial superiority will not in itself guarantee its position as the world's cop.
Russia, because it took no part in the war, could not expect any any rewards. But to ensure a presence all the same, it had to rush in and interpose itself between the NATO forces. This kind of action only confirms that Russia today is a second rate imperialist power.
The decline of American world leadership
It was the way the war ended, without a land offensive, which deprived the US of concretising its military advantage on the ground.
This land offensive had long been called for by Britain which, with its experienced professional army, was best placed to carry it through. This threat was definitely an essential factor in the capitulation of Milosevic, who was all the less ready to face up to it, given that the bombing had seriously weakened his industrial and military potential, and that desertions and rebellions in his army would only have been broadened by further military disasters.
The USA had been preparing its public opinion for this step. The effectiveness of over two months of bombing enabled it to envisage carrying out a land war without a major risk of troop losses (a factor the US bourgeoisie has had to take into account ever since the Vietnam war).
But the USA got short-circuited by other NATO powers, Germany and France in particular, with the help of Russia. These countries had little interest in fighting a land war which would only have further emphasised their subordinordinate position. They thus redoubled their diplomatic initiatives towards Milosevic in order to make him understand that they all had a mutual interest in avoiding a land war. And so, in contrast to the Gulf war, where the USA was able to carry out its military strategy from start to finish, this time the Americans were unable to stop these initiatives in their tracks.
The result has been that in the dividing up of Kosovo, the US can't impose its will to the detriment of its partners and rivals in NATO. As for Britain, although it didn't have to use its troops in a land war, it has still been able to take the lead role in the maintenance of "order" in Kosovo.
The great powers face up to each other in the Balkans
The fact that the US has lost out in this race, and that outside circumstantial alliances it finds itself alone against the other powers, doesn't mean that any of the latter have forged any durable alliances either. We are seeing the reign of every man for himself on the imperialist arena, in contrast to the period when the existence of two imperialist blocs channelled these rivalries towards the two poles.
The installation of a 50,000-strong "peacekeeping force" in Kosovo, far from representing any stabilisation of the region, will actually be the main factor in aggravating imperialist tensions. The different armed corps rps are only there to defend the imperialist interests of the powers which have dispatched them. The general course of the class struggle imposes limits on the scope of imperialist conflicts, in particular by preventing them from turning into direct confrontations between the major powers. This is why, since the break up of Yugoslavia in 1991, the tensions between the great powers have been expressed via the actions of the various local armed gangs who act on their behalf. But the massive presence of these powers on the ground will heighten tensions throughout the region. It has created an irreversible situation from which it will be extremely difficult for any of the western powers to pull out.
There will certainly be no reconstruction of Serbia, with or without Milosevic; this could only be a pure loss for any investors. Neither will there be any peace in the Balkans. Social decomposition will accelerate under the rule of armed gangs and mafiosi; and even this will only be a temporary status quo as the material for new explosions bubbles under the surface.
In June, having wallowed in imperialist war under the pretext of 'humanitarianism', the bourgeoisie in the west claimed a great victory for 'democracy' over Milosevic. The so-called allies of the anti-Milosevic coalition were rushing to install anti-Milosevic coalition were rushing to install 'peace' and construct an 'independent, democratic Kosovo'. A grand project, but we saw very quickly what they really meant. The region has become one of the most militarised in the world. The great powers are staring each other out, lending rapid support to their own pitbulls, the local armed gangs under their control, in order to settle scores between themselves. And what about the dividends of peace? Before the military intervention, it was the Kosovans who were being massacred; for some considerable time the great powers were not unduly worried about it, until some of them saw it as a pretext for military intervention. Today it's the Serbs, under the 'protection' of the UN 'peacekeeping' force KFOR, who are being subjected to massive reprisals: 160,000 of them have fled Kosovo since the end of the NATO bombing and the entry of the 'allied' contingents. The tension between Serbs and Albanians has grown daily, fuelled by the various armed cliques who are under the orders of their bigger bosses.
Let's also recall the outraged cries of the western bourgeoisie when they uncovered the mass graves of the victims of the savage repression carried out by the Serbian army and militias. This was certainly yet another ghastly crime of nationalism. But the great western democracies are really poorly placed to denounce it. Weren't Karadic's Serb militias, responsible for the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, secretlyly supported by France and Britain? Since the outbreak of the war in Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 90s, the great powers have ceaselessly encouraged the rebirth of age-old ethnic tensions for their own imperialist interests. The noise they are now making about the horrors of war, even before the smoke from their bombings has cleared, is thus an expression of their extreme cynicism. But it has two very definite aims. In the first place, to again justify their military intervention whose professed objective - the return of the Kosovan refugees - doesn't stand up too well given the price being paid by the Serbian population in Kosovo. In the second place, to create an ideological smokescreen to forestall any questions by the population of the advanced countries, and by the working class in particular, about the real balance sheet of this operation. Questions such as: how many people were killed by the NATO bombings, what kind of misery will be endured by the survivors in a country which, according to the NATO strategists themselves, has been thrown back fifty years? The answer, that the bourgeoisie does not want us to come up with, is that the war has only aggravated chaos and suffering, and that this was totally predictable.
However much they tell us that Milosevic alone is responsible for all this suffering, the French, British, American, German and other imperialist bandits who are jostling foror influence in the region can't get off the hook. The Sarajevo summit, which legitimised the presence of their occupation troops in Kosovo, also expressed the local balance of forces between them, in the shape of the strategic importance of the zones attributed to each one.
At the same time, the bourgeoisie in the west also wants to hide the economic cost of its military intervention. At the beginning of the bombings, for example, figures like 200 million dollars a day were bandied around. Since then, silence. The air raids intensified, but there was no longer any question of evaluating their cost.
This is no accident. The bourgeoisie is paying close attention to the way this imperialist conflict is perceived by the workers. While the proletariat of the developed countries did not react openly against the war, neither did it adhere to the bellicose, democratic campaigns. And above all it did not give up the defence of its own class interests. This could be seen by the fact that even during the war itself there were struggles in different parts of the world in response to the economic attacks: for example, the railway workers' strikes in France in April, against the advise of the CGT and the CFDT; or, during the same period, the massive demonstration of 25,000 municipal workers in New York. In such a context, the ruling class does not want to throw oil on the fire and is doindoing all it can to prevent the proletariat from developing its consciousness on the following points in particular:
- it's essentially the working class which has to bear the cost of the war, through an accentuation of all kinds of economic attacks;
- the 'humanitarian' war in the Balkans is above all the expression of growing imperialist tensions between all countries, and in particular between the great powers;
- only the working class, through its struggle, can paralyse the murderous hand of the bourgeoisie.
The deepening of the capitalist crisis, and the resulting aggravation of economic attacks, will inevitably compel the working class to fight back. And it is in the development of the struggle for its conditions of existence that the proletariat will be led to understand that this struggle also demands that the military barbarity of the capitalist system be questioned and confronted.
September marked the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War. The ruling class has used the occasion World War. The ruling class has used the occasion to hold up the war as a defining moment of the 20th century, when democracy stood up to and defeated fascism in order to allow the development of human rights and democracy. This message has been given added weight by the Kosovo war, where we were also told that NATO was struggling against the 'new' Hitler and his fascist hordes. Communists would agree that the Second World War was a defining moment of this century but not for the same reasons. What the slaughter of 60 million people in the war showed was the depths of barbarity that decadent capitalism can plumb.
This war was not fought for democracy, but to defend imperialist interests. The mechanised destruction of World War One had marked the entry of capitalism into its decadence. By the beginning of the century capitalism embraced the whole planet and thus the only way that nations could expand was through the economic and military conquest of their rivals' markets and colonies. In 1914 Germany was a giant imperialist power with a minuscule empire; it launched the war to break the global grip of its main rivals, especially Britain. In 1939, Germany struck out again to overturn the humiliating limitations imposed on it by the victors of the previous war. On the other hand, its main rivals had the advantage of their huge economic power, in the case of the US. or their empire, in Britain's case. This enabled them to defend the status quo mainly y through economic and diplomatic means, and to appear as the innocent, peace-loving victims when Germany launched its desperate struggle for imperialist survival. "The democracies must never appear as the aggressor", as President Roosevelt said on the eve of war with Japan - which like German imperialism had to strike out because of its inferior imperialist position.
The myth of anti-fascism
In the First World War, Britain and its allies had justified the war as a struggle against the despotic "Hun" and for King and Country. To mobilise the population for the next war, after the experience of the Russian Revolution and the Depression, such unalloyed patriotism was not enough. The ruling class needed a much more sophisticated mystification and the fascist menace provided it. The war in Spain from 1936-39 showed the ideological power of anti-fascism as a means of mobilising the working class. The fact that all of the democracies had supported the rise of fascism in Germany, first as democracy's death squads against the German Revolution, then as a bulwark against Russia - Britain signed a naval treaty with Germany in 1935 - was carefully hidden. In this new alliance, Stalinist Russia (whose repression of the workers was no less bloody than Hitler's) became an honorary democracy and its pretensions to be being a socialist fatherland were uwere used as a further proof that the cause of anti-fascism was the cause of the working class.
Barbarism - fascist and democratic
For five years the world was shaken by an orgy of destruction and unprecedented levels of barbarity. The most obvious expression of this was the Nazi death camps and the wholesale genocide against the Jews, gypsies etc. But this barbarity was seized upon by the Allies at the end of the war to serve as an alibi for their own slaughter of millions of innocent people in the war. This slaughter took many forms: the policy of terror bombing all German cities ("An offensive of extensive bombing could sap the morale of the enemy providing it is directed against the working class areas of the 58 German towns which have a population of more than 100,000..." - Linndeman, Churchill's adviser, March 1942, quoted in International Review No 66); the bombing of cities in France and other occupied areas during the war and after D-day (for example Caen and St Malo were flattened in '44); the carefully calculated atomic liquidation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the forced starvation of millions in West Bengal in 1943 - approximately three million died when the crops were taken to feed the troops... As regards the death camps, the Allies didn't mention them until the end of the war, though they knew about them. In fact when theen the SS offered to release a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 lorries or other goods the Allies refused. In 1943, Roosevelt made clear the thinking behind such a refusal: "transporting so many people would disorganise the war effort" (Churchill's Memoirs, Vol 10). Thus, the refusal to help the Jews, the starvation and bombing of civilian populations were not signs of moral weakness but part of the logic of imperialism: nothing must get in the way of the war effort.
The war required the crushing of the working class
The defence of democracy was also the banner under which the international bourgeoisie crushed the revolutionary struggles of the world proletariat between 1917-27. This wave of struggle swept the ruling class from power in Russia, nearly toppled the bourgeoisie in Germany and rocked them internationally: it had been provoked initially by the horrors of the First World War. The ruling class, through a combination of brutal repression and the use of illusions in bourgeois democracy, smashed the revolution and so nullified the only force capable of blocking the road to another war. In 1939 the defeated proletarians were dragooned off to war in their millions; but towards the end of the war there was the beginning of a proletarian response to the war. In 1943, there was a massive wave of strikes in Northern Italy. The Allie Allies, seeing the class enemy raising its head, stopped their advance through southern Italy in order to allow "the Italians to stew in their own juice" (Churchill). This meant leaving the German bourgeoisie to brutally repress the strikes, while the Allies helped their Nazi class brothers by bombing Milan. Such acts of bottomless cynicism (fear of the German working class rising up at the end of the war was also a prime motive behind the terror bombing of German cities) enabled the Allies to strangle at birth the danger posed by the proletariat.
Even in these darkest of hours for the working class, revolutionary voices were raised against the war. Despite their small forces, groups of the communist left in Europe - who had make a complete break from both the official Communist Parties and the Trotskyists, political forces which had all enrolled in the anti-fascist war effort - carried out a determined internationalist intervention. They produced publications and leaflets calling for revolutionary defeatism; where possible these were distributed to troops on both sides. "Workers! The war isn't just fascism! It's also democracy and 'socialism in one country', it's also the USSR. It's the whole capitalist regime, which, in its death throes, is dragging the whole of society down with it! Capitalism can't give you peace; even when the war ends, it can't give you anything more.
Against the capitalist war, the class solution is civil war! Only through civil war leading to the seizure of power by the proletariat today can there arise a new society, an economy of consumption and no longer of destruction!
Against parasitism and the war effort!
For international proletarian solidarity.
For the transformation of imperialist war into civil war"
(The Communist Left, French Fraction - L'Etincelle (the Spark) No 1, January 1945, Quoted in International Review No 59)
Over the summer South Africa has been rocked by the largest wave of strikes since the ANC took power in 1994. With economic growth stagnant at 0.6%, unemployment running at 30%, and inflation at 7.3%, the new ANC administration led by Thabo Mbeki have committed themselves to "fiscal discipline", which can only mean attacks on the living and working conditions of the proletariat.
The working class is indeed coming under some very heavy attacks. While 350,000 new workers join the labour market each year, more jobs are being destroyed. Between 1996 and 1999, 365,000 jobs in the non-agricultural sector were lost. Between 1997 and 1999, 150,000 mining jobs went, with a further 28,000 scheduled to be cut in the next two months. In the same period, 110,000 manufacturing jobs, 22,000 textile and clothing jobs and 110,000 construction jobs have gone. Between 1998 and 1999, 110,000 service and transport sector jobs went, together with 10,000 in finance. The situation will continue to deteriorate as the economic crisis deepens.
If the recent election campaign served to divert workers' discontent onto the false terrain of 'democracy', this pent-up anger expressed itself very soon after the ANC's decisive victory. At the end of August, a two week strike by 26,000 Telecom and post office workers saw them win a pay rise of 8% from the Post Office. July saw some bitter struggles in the minefields with 4,500 workers on strike at the Oryx gold mine. The unrest continued in August with 12,000 miners on strike for a fortnight in protest against "retrenchments" due to the collapse in the price of gold. The mine owners con conceded an 8% pay rise. At the Columbus Steel mill in Middleburg 500 workers have been on strike since July 12; 150 workers have been arrested. There have also been strikes by railway workers, textile workers and Volkswagen workers.
But by far the largest strike was the two-day stoppage called by the public sector unions at the end of July. This involved up to 300,000 teachers, health care workers and others, in demand of a 10% pay rise. The ANC initially offered 5.7%, and then upped it to 6.8%, but with inflation at 7.3% this still amounted to a pay cut. After two weeks of further negotiations with the unions the ANC walked out of the talks and imposed the pay cut unilaterally. The unions' response was to call a day of 'protest' on August 24th that saw half a million workers out on the streets. Up to 35,000 demonstrators marched in Pretoria and in Cape Town 10,000 demonstrators brought the city centre to a standstill. There were also marches and mass meetings in Bloemfontein, Nelspruit, Pietersburg, Mafikeng, Durban and Bisho
Although these strikes show the depth of anger within the class the unions have once again done all they can to divide the workers and control their resistance to the economic attacks. The three public sector unions that called the two-day strike in July are affiliated to COSATU, the largest of the two main union federations. The other main union federateration is FEDUSA. One of its unions, the mainly white Public Servants Association, held a one day strike in early August which has helped to divide the workers in the public sector and keep them trapped behind their own unions. In the mines the NUM appear to have been provoking the bosses to sack 'rank and file' union officials and using this as an excuse to call out the rest of the workers. The CWU went to great lengths to keep the disputes against the Post Office and Telecom separate, using other tactics such as go-slows and working-to-rule in place of all-out strikes.
For the moment it looks as if the fire fighting tactics of the unions have worked and they have the situation under control. But the very existence of such struggles is significant in itself. The economic attacks by the ANC will help break the illusions many workers have in the 'peoples'' government, in black nationalism and democracy. The ANC are part of the bourgeoisie and will increasingly be seen as such. They have shown themselves to be ardent defenders of capitalism and will have no qualms in attacking the workers, whatever colour skin they have. But what of the unions? They continue to radicalise their image. At its recent congress, COSATU's acting president attacked the government for imposing its wage offer on the public sector workers. He was immediately rebuked by ANC Chairman Patrick Lekota, who said there was a "smell of a lack of revolutionary discipline, particularly since those opinions have never been raised in the movement". He added that complaints against the government should be made privately inside the alliance between the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Lekota also suggested that public disputes between the ANC government and COSATU would confuse "mass based support". Any break-up of the tripartite alliance and criticism of the government was also opposed by SACP General Secretary Blade Nzimande: "The alliance still remains the only vehicle for taking forward the transformation in our country. To abandon the ANC would be to agree with those who try to present the ANC as a conservative, elite organisation". It is precisely because workers are beginning to see the ANC as a 'conservative, elite' (ie bourgeois) organisation that the unions have been compelled to take their distance from it. But it is the whole 'tripartite alliance' of ANC, unions and CP (together with a plethora of more radical leftist groups) which acts as capitalism's flood barrier against the proletarian tide.
Through his exposes and his contributions to the discussions, Cajo Brendel proved, in our opinion, that the 'classic' positions of the German-Dutch left have lost none of their relevance even if, as Brendel asserted, along with Marx, "our theory is not a dogma but a guide to action". As has long been the case with, what can be called "the Dutch can be called "the Dutch school of marxism", which was animated by, among others, Anton Pannekoek and Hermann Gorter, comrade Brendel denounced the bourgeois character of parliamentarism, the trade unions, and social democracy, and the state capitalist nature of the former eastern bloc. And while the state capitalist currents like Stalinism and Trotskyism have welcomed the new "Red-Green" government in Germany as a step forward for the working class, Brendel showed the profoundly anti-working class nature of this government.
With regard to the "voluntarism" that has become fashionable today, Brendel explained that it's not enough just to want the revolution. Revolution presupposes the objective economic and social crisis of the system.
Understanding the 20th century and the question of determinism
Cajo Brendel's positions gave rise to some controversial discussions, as was his intention. The question was raised of integrating the major events of the 20th century into an overall understanding of the historic period and of the balance of forces between the classes. For Brendel, a victorious proletarian revolution in Spain in the 1930s was not possible above all because modern capitalism had not yause modern capitalism had not yet arrived in Spain (for a detailed presentation of Brendel's position on Spain, see the pamphlet (written with Henri Simon) "From anti-Francoism to after-Francoism: political illusions and the class struggle" - Editions Spartacus).
For Brendel, there are certain parallels between Spain in the 30s and Russia in 1917: in both cases these were bourgeois revolutions.
A participant remarked that Spain in the 1930s was still an essentially agrarian country but that agriculture like industry functioned on a capitalist basis. The main criticism of Brendel's conception, for whom the bourgeois revolution was still on the agenda at that time in Spain, was raised by comrades of the former group "The Social Revolution is not a Party Matter" (founded in Germany after 1968, this group was in its time the first left communist organisation in Germany for decades, even if it only had an ephemeral existence). These comrades declared that Cajo Brendel was only seeing the events in themselves, isolated from the international and historical framework. The question of why the workers' struggles in Spain had not given rise to workers' councils and were doomed to defeat can only be explained with reference to the international situatince to the international situation. The workers' councils in Russia, in Germany and central Europe which arose at the end of the first world war, the comrades argued, proved that the proletarian revolution was on the agenda, not locally but on a world scale.
The comrades in Berlin subjected Brendel's position to another important criticism: the fact that the revolutionary struggle ended in defeat does not in itself mean that the proletarian revolution is not on the historical agenda. There cannot be a proletarian revolution without the objective conditions for it being ripe. But objective conditions alone are not enough to guarantee its success. By underestimating the question of the development of revolutionary consciousness within the working class - a consciousness which in 1917-18 was on the rise but then clearly went into retreat (this was the reason why the Spanish workers could relatively easily be mobilised onto the terrain of bourgeois democracy) - Cajo Brendel, in our opinion, is the victim of a determinist conception.
At this public meeting, the ICC declared itself to be in agreement with the former Social Revolution comrades. In fact, the council communist branch of the communist left, as defended by Cajo Brendel, had, on the question of the Russian ree question of the Russian revolution, fallen into the old conception of Kautsky and the Mensheviks, according to which, owing to the backward state of Russia in 1917, only a bourgeois revolution was on the agenda at the time. But all the revolutionaries of that period, whether Lenin and Luxemburg or Bordiga and Pannekoek, knew that the only possible revolution was the world proletarian revolution.
At the public meeting entitled 'Council communism against Bolshevism', held in Berlin, one participant rightly criticised the theory of 'the collapse of capitalism' which, in the 1920s, led a part of the German-Dutch left to wait for a sudden and objective paralysis of capitalist economic activity on such a scale that the proletariat would be more or less forced to make the revolution. This conception also underestimates the role of class consciousness.
The events in Spain and the decadence of capitalism
The ICC's intervention at the public meeting on the war in Spain focused on the defence of the attitude of the Italian and Dutch left communists towards these events. Both the Italian Fraction in exile around the review Bilan, and the Gruppe Internationale Kommunisten in Holland explained that both the fascist explained that both the fascists under Franco and the Popular Front of the bourgeois left were enemies of the proletariat, and that the contribution of the Stalinists and of the anarchists of the CNT to this defeat was considerable. Bilan and the GIK agreed on the fact that it was no longer the bourgeois revolution that was on the agenda but a bourgeois counter-revolution.
But even Cajo Brendel's group at that time, which published the review Proletarier in the Hague, strictly refused to support the anti-fascist Popular Front. These were the political foundations for the defence of proletarian internationalism - in continuity with Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg - by the communist left during the second world war. We asked Cajo Brendel to take a position on our presentation on the attitude of the left communists. He replied, without going into details, that the starting point of these currents had not been the struggle against both fronts but how to fight fascism in the most effective way. In a letter in which he took position on the first draft of this article dealing with his visit to Germany, Cajo Brendel was more precise about his attitude towards the role of the anarchists in Spain: "It was not the CNT which abandoned the working class but certain anarcho-syndicalist ministers".
Because of this it seems to us that Brendel's view represents a step backwards, not only in relation to the GIK but also to his own position at the time. For us, this political weakness is linked to the rejection of the theory of decadence. When the Communist International was founded in 1919, all the marxists shared the conception that capitalism had entered into its period of decline since 1914. With the victory of the counter-revolution, and above all after the second world war, parts of the communist left - Bordigists as well as council communists - abandoned the theory of decadence.The question of class consciousness
At the meeting on councilism and Bolshevism, Brendel encountered lively opposition to his assertion that the more workers become conscious, the more they move away from their material interests. Such conceptions, in our view, show the degree to which council communism today has distanced itself from the basic approach of Pannekoek, for whom class consciousness and self-organisation were the only weapons of the working class. And, while the original German-Dutch left passionately supported the necessity for an organised and centralised intervention by revolutionaries, the contemporary viaries, the contemporary view of council communism is that class consciousness only appears and develops in a local, immediate way in day-to-day struggles(1). In this conception, while the unification of revolutionaries in a particular organisation is not excluded, neither is it seen as being very important.
A positive balance sheet
For us, the balance sheet of this series of public meetings organised by Brendel is a positive one. It succeeded it bringing the positions of the communist left to a wider public. Moreover, an authentic image of proletarian discussion was given in these meetings, totally different from the Stalinist and Trotskyist policy of manoeuvring and sabotaging debate. Cajo Brendel, the ICC, the former Social Revolution members, and other sympathisers of the proletarian political milieu, were able to make a common defence of the positions of the communist left. Cajo Brendel's attitude to the discussion was open, polemical, fraternal, and thus profitable to political clarification.
These public meetings not only provided a focus for clarification, but also for political combat. The ruling class followed attentively Brendel's visit to Germany and was prepared for it. Representatives of the lefr it. Representatives of the left wing of capital were present in numbers, but for the most part did not openly intervene under their bourgeois flags. Instead they did all they could to prevent discussion on the historic significance of the political positions of the communist left by diverting attention towards the errors of council communism today.
This fact was a determining element in all the interventions by our organisation. There are of course numerous disagreements between the ICC and Brendel's group Daad en Gedachte; we have debated them publicly in the past and we will continue to do so in the future. But for us what was essential at this meeting was to proclaim and defend together our common political heritage. For us, Cajo Brendel is a part of the proletarian political milieu, a comrade of the communist left. It was thus vital to stand together against the bourgeoisie's attacks and slanders, its attempts to stifle debate. It was vital to prevent the bourgeoisie from hijacking the left communist tradition in order to distort it and emasculate it.
Up till recently the German bourgeoisie has tended to present the German-Dutch left as a radical curiosity of the past, a museum piece of merely academic interest. Recently however the ruling class has identified the ruling class has identified the communist left as a major political enemy. Only a few years ago big European dailies such as Le Monde or the Zeitung Frankfurter Allgemeine put out whole pages of slanders against Amadeo Bordiga's internationalist attitude towards the second world war. And indeed, the resolute defence of internationalism during the war in Spain and the second world war, when anarchism and Trotskyism betrayed the proletarian cause, is the primordial and common characteristic of our tradition - whether we are talking about the 'Dutch', 'Italian' or 'French' left.
And as the events in Iraq and the Balkans show, capitalism today is plunging deeper and deeper into militarism and war. As always in such periods, the 'comrades without a country', the consistent proletarian internationalists, are the most dangerous enemies of the bourgeoisie. We are proud of it.
(from Weltrevolution 92, ICC paper in Germany)
(1) We sent the draft of this article to comrade Brendel so he could make sure that his positions had been accurately represented. It was important for us to avoid any misunderstandings which could only take the debate in a false direction. As regards his position on class consciousness at this series of meetings, comrade Brendel wrote to as follows: "It is really ridiculous to say that 'the question of revolutionary class consciousness within the working class' was omitted. I discussed this the first evening with one of the young women present. I again raised it another evening. Perhaps the ICC people were not present. But it is necessary to avoid such affirmations".
But these events are also the product of the collapse of the eastern bloc ten years ago, which ended the period of the two imperialist blocs around the USA and the USSR. They are a new manifestation of the tendency towards chaos and 'every man for himself' which has grown more and more marked since then, and has given rise to an explosion of nationalism across the globe.
Indonesia's place in the period of the blocs and after
Up until the last decade, Indonesia was a strategic bastion of the western bloc in this region, against the USSR but also against China. Despite the ferocious repression against the pro-Chinese Indonesian Communist Party in 1965 (which left 500,000 dead), the west's fear that general Sukharno (who had proclaimed himself "president for life" in 1963) would succumb to Chinese pressure led to him being replaced by another bloody dictator, Suharto, in 1966, through a coup d'Etat engineered by the USA. This was also the reason why, in 1975, at the time of Indonesia's brutal invasion of East Timor in 1975 - a real bloodbath which claimed 200,000 victims, and which had the aim of preventing the accession to power of the Moscow-backed movement for the independence of Timor (Freitilin) - not one state in the western camp objected, even if the UN refused to formally recognise the annexation.
Since the disappearance of the Russian threat, Indonesia can no longer play the same role of gendarme for the western bloc in the region. But it is a huge archipelago which remains at the heart of a highly important strategic zone, linking the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This is why the USA still aims to maintain its control over this country. To do tcontrol over this country. To do this it was necessary for the US to allow the departure of Suharto following the riots of 1998. These were the consequence of the financial crash which shook the so-called 'emerging economies' of east Asia in the autumn of 1997; more particularly they were the product of the drastic austerity plan imposed by the IMF in exchange for emergency aid to save Indonesia from bankruptcy. It soon became clear that the democratic halo around Suharto's successor Habibie is just a bluff.
In Indonesia, the same old mafia-type clique, still dominated by Suharto's cronies, continues to hold power via the army. When you consider for example that over 40% of the land in East Timor is the property of Indonesian generals, and that they have held onto this land through a real reign of terror, you can appreciate the level of corruption that is the norm in this and similar countries.
Imperialist gangsters large and small
But it's not simply because Indonesia is run by a bunch of gangsters that its government has unleashed such a level of violence in East Timor. This behaviour is dictated by the simple need to defend national imperialist interests, because if the Indonesian state lets part of Timor go, the whole of Int of Timor go, the whole of Indonesia would face the threat of implosion. Its fragile unity is based on a patchwork quilt of islands that host different ethnic groups, different religions and different cultures, with different colonial histories. The secession of East Timor would be a big encouragement for other islands or provinces where pro-independence 'troubles' have already broken out, notably Aceh, Riau and Irian-Jaya. This is why Indonesian imperialism has carried out this ruthless massacre: to discourage the others.
But neighbouring Australia, which is heading the anti-Indonesian crusade and which makes up the bulk of the UN intervention force in East Timor, is not animated by any nobler intentions. When we recall that Australia is the only state to have recognised the annexation of East Timor in 1975, we can see the real meaning of this sudden change of tune. It's simply that Australia is taking advantage of the situation and the difficulties of its imperialist rival Indonesia to try and take its place as the new regional overlord. By playing on the fact that it has up till now been a faithful ally of the US, the Australian state is making sure that its own national interests are being advanced, even if its intervention through the UN has been blessed by the White House.
But these mafia methods don't end there. All the great powers who are presenting themselves as the champions of democracy and human rights have once again revealed their duplicity. After a period of almost total silence by the main protagonists of the murderous intervention in Yugoslavia, the first statements of position were in favour of non-intervention. The US defence secretary, William Cohen, declared on 8 September:
"We must be selective about the places where we commit our forces and in the current circumstances this is not a place where we are prepared to commit our troops". As for the British foreign secretary Robin Cook, one of the most ardent war-mongers over Kosovo, he was saying on 5 September that "no one in the world is ready to land in force in East Timor".
All the great powers were unanimous: military intervention was "too dangerous". What hypocrisy! We only have to think back to the rapid dispatch of US marines to Somalia in 1992, a country completely riven by civil war between rival gangs, to see that this argument is just an alibi.
The real reason for their equivocation is that most of them have no interest in the break-up of Ino interest in the break-up of Indonesia, especially the US. On the contrary, their deliberate policy faced with the well-planned and predictable massacres was to let the Indonesian government do the dirty work of crushing the Timorese in order to issue a warning to other islands in the archipelago and dissuade other independence movements. The long-delayed intervention by the UN, two weeks after the battle, aimed at bolstering the great powers' image as defenders of democracy and peace, was a real illustration of their cynicism. What's more, while much of East Timor is in ruins and deserted by its inhabitants, the UN has left intact the armed bases of the militias in West Timor, a legal Indonesian territory, where these armed gangs continue to terrorise the population, above all because so many people were pushed into the trap of fleeing to the western part of the island.
The USA was not able to prevent the UN - and behind it, the USA's European rivals - from taking the initiative for the 'peacekeeping' force in Kosovo. It was the UN which took the initiative last May in organising the referendum on the independence of East Timor, which was a real provocation for Indonesia. It is again the UN which has taken responsibility for the intervention in East Timor. And if we have seen European states like France using ropean states like France using UN flags to proclaim "the inalienable right of the Timorese people to self-determination and independence", it is because, behind this humanitarian blather, they are out to challenge and destabilise American domination in a region which was for many years in the colonial orbit of the European states.
All the speeches and promises made ten years ago about the opening of a new era of peace have been proven to be nothing but lies. We saw this with the Gulf war, then with the successive conflicts which tore Yugoslavia to shreds, or with the genocides on the African continent. In all the strategic areas of the planet - and now this is also the case around the Asian continent, as the intervention in East Timor shows - the great powers are compelled to step in, each one to ensure the defence of their own imperialist interests. All their humanitarian language is just a pretext for this, and it is an increasing number of local populations who are paying the bloody price.
CB
Rwanda, the Congo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kashmir, Kosovo and now East Timor. As the world watches, yet another carefully pre-planned mass slaughter is enacted, even before the blood is dry at the site of the last one. Thousands -perhaps tens of thousands- have been butchered. This time, however, it is not happening 'far away', but right on Australia's doorstep, and in a place where Australian capitalism has long, intimate connections.
Australia will lead the multinational military force to intervene in East Timor. This will be a long and bloody affair. "On long and bloody affair. "Once the commitment has been made, it will be years before all the Australians can come home", a defence official has warned (The Age, 9 Sept. 1999). But it will all be worth it, we are assured: this crusade would "restore peace and security in East Timor" (The Australian, 13 Sept.).
The Labor Party, the trade unions and the leftist groups have been even more vociferous in their support for such intervention. And the media relentlessly reminds us that more East Timorese are being murdered daily. Democratic Australia is opposing the butchers of Jakarta, and for once was unafraid to stand up to even the united states. So what's wrong?
Canberra's bloody Jakarta connection
There can be no doubt that thousands of East Timorese civilians have been slaughtered by Jakarta's armed gangs. But Canberra is not the innocent bystander it claims to be. As with all capitalist war drives, this one is also based on convenient memory lapses, not to mention outright lies. The fact is that every time capitalist Australia has any connection with East Timorese and Indonesians, it is workers and poor farmers who die on all sides.
During World Wa="-1" face="Arial">During World War II, Australian imperialism fought part of its war with Japan using East Timorese as canon fodder.
In 1965, the Indonesian Government of the day was overthrown in a brutal military coup. Java's rivers ran red with the blood of hundreds of thousands - including many workers - for months. Australia warmly supported the new military dictatorship of Suharto and Co.
Australia and the Western Alliance turned a determined blind eye to the Indonesian military's repression of workers and poor farmers over the next 30 years.
In the final analysis, the West had no serious problems with the way the Suharto regime conducted itself. Strikes were brutally crushed, and Indonesian imperialism forcibly extended its scope to West Papua and East Timor. Undaunted, the West -including Australia- continued to provide military aid to Jakarta. It has done the same to the current gang of Habibie, Alatas and Wiranto. When you're on a winner, stick to it!
The fraud of 'democracy'
The break up of the former USSR and the Eastern bloc in the late 1980s meant the end of the Cold War, but it has hardly ushered in the golden era of international peace and brotherhood that we were promised by capitalism. Indeed, since that time, military tensions, genocidal massacres and wars have only multiplied.
Without the threat of Russia, the United States is no longer able to prevent its former allies from competing directly with it and each other for a share of the imperialist pie. Powers both large (France, Germany, etc.) and small (Iraq, Serbia etc.) have clashed with America either directly (the smaller powers) or by proxy, through the training and deployment of local nationalist gangs.
Australian capitalism's admittedly minor, but nonetheless bloody, record on the world stage -and especially with respect to Indonesia and East Timor- demonstrates that it can only bring more bloodshed with its plans to lead an international force of 'peacekeepers'.
Yet not only the Liberal/National Party Coalition, but also the Labor Party and the Democrats, the ACTU [Australian Confederation of Trade Unions] and the leftist groups say the opposite. Can the capitalist leopard really change its spots?
East Timor's misery - Canberra's opportunity!
The tThe truth is that Australian capital sees the misery of the East Timorese as a burning opportunity for it to at long last strike out for its share of the post-Cold War booty, by leading its own military adventure. The Australian Government has caused a major embarrassment to an over-stretched US on this issue, not to mention severely disturbed Washington's cosy relationship with Jakarta.
The stakes are big for Australia. Indonesia is the world's forth most populous country. Australian capital aims to bring it forcibly under its wing - over the bodies of not only East Timorese civilians, but also the soldiers on all sides who never asked to be there, workers and peasants in uniform. And that is without reckoning on the chilling possibility of an escalating conflict which spreads to other Indonesian territories. Like all wars this century, the major casualties will be civilians.
Once again capitalism is showing us its real face: an endless barbarism, good only for death and destruction. Wars are not caused by 'bad' or 'weak' world leaders. They are capitalism's only answer to its insurmountable economic crisis.
It is the crisis that is sharpening the rivalries between nations, pushing them to seeminglynations, pushing them to seemingly endless military confrontations. The more the crisis deepens -as we are seeing right now- the more capitalism will wallow in blood, and the closer war will come to the developed countries.
Kosovo repeats itself
The countries who recently made war against Yugoslavia hypocritically claim that this was urgently necessary to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovars. This lie relied upon 'forgetting' that it was the NATO invasion itself which provided Belgrade with the best excuse - and practical opportunity - to do this.
Similarly, in East Timor, it is much the same powers who helped create the conditions for the present massacre. Australia and the United Nations 'assured' the East Timorese that they could deliver 'peace' and independence' to them, if only the East Timorese would vote for it. It was always obvious that Jakarta would never accept losing this territory
In June this year, communications intercepted by the Australian Signals Directorate proved that the Indonesian military was meticulously planning the current ethnic cleansing. Undaunted, the Australian Government publicly denied the veracity of these reports. Yet, as PM Howard has since admiYet, as PM Howard has since admitted, Australian troops have been preparing since at least early 1999 to play an active interventionist role in East Timor, when Jakarta's violent post-referendum campaign inevitably erupted there.
No other conclusion makes sense: Canberra was banking on Jakarta's present murderous offensive in East Timor, just like Washington was on Belgrade's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
What can be done?
The purpose of the media campaign is to make the workers feel helpless in the face of the ferocity of the massacres, and to create active support for an armed Australian intervention. It also wants to make us feel grateful that we live in such an enclave of capitalist democracy, surrounded by countless bloodthirsty Third World despots.
The ACTU, the Labor Party and others have taken up the government's campaign for military intervention in East Timor. They have picked up the media's theme of 'helplessness', with their own hopeless slogan of 'do something'. Meanwhile, the so-called 'revolutionary left' intones its usual theme of 'no confidence' in such an intervention - while fundamentally supporting it. The leftists also work to divert away from a working class solution, by pushing the deadly illusion of an 'independent East Timor' - as if any country can be independent of the machinations of the great powers today.
It is a convenient distribution of labour: the mainstream political forces seek to recruit the ordinary workers, while the leftists sing the same tune in a more militant octave, to attempt to draw in those militant elements who might otherwise have misgivings. It is a blood-soaked, capitalist campaign on all sides.
Fixing a problem requires going to its roots. The cause of war is capitalism. Only independent working class action can stop massacres and genocide in country after country. All workers must firmly resist being dragged on board the capitalist's war machine. Workers should not forget that, while our class has certainly been battered by the economic crisis, it has successfully prevented the capitalists from following the logic of their inhuman system, and unleashing World War III.
Workers everywhere need to defend their own independent interests. That is the only way to weaken the capitalist war machine. By refusing to accept the sacrifices that the ruling class wants to impose in order to finance its wars, by refusing to bear the brunt of the system's economic crisis, the workers can gain the collective strength to refuse the ultimate sacrifice: that of their lives in imperialist war - and in the process regain confidence in their own ability to play a decisive role in the future of humanity. Only when the workers in every country can put an end to capitalism will capitalist barbarism cease.
Communist Left Discussion Circle, 13.9.99.
To contact the circle write to GPO Box 1729P, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia
Four days after the Paddington rail crash, the death toll is still uncertain, but will probably be well over 120.
The "public" has grown intelligent about such disasters. Alongside the horror at the carnage in the wrecked carriages, alongside the shock and grief of the bereaved, there has bee the shock and grief of the bereaved, there has been a powerful groundswell of anger. It is widely understood that an event like this cannot be explained away as an "accident". It is widely understood that this is part of a pattern.
A pattern on the railways: Clapham, Southall. A pattern in other transport systems: Kings Cross, Herald of Free Enterprise. A pattern in industry: Piper Alpha, the explosion at the JCO nuclear plant in Japan. And a pattern that is worldwide: it is also widely understood that the huge death tolls from the growing number of "natural" disasters - earthquakes in Turkey, Athens and Taiwan, floods in China, Bangla Desh and Mexico - are not "natural" at all.
The most idiotic tabloids may now be spitting on the memory of the "novice" driver who is supposed to have driven through the red light at Paddington. But there are too many simple facts which show that we are not just dealing with human error here:
And this is why there is so much anger: it is widely understood that lives have once again been sacrificed on the altar of profit. Just as in Japan, where corners were cut in the most blatant manner in response to increasing economic competition. Just as in Turkey, where houses built s in Turkey, where houses built cheap to boost profits collapsed like matchstick models.
There are those - especially the Labour left, the unions, the SWP etc - who blame privatisation for the Paddington crash, and say the answer is to "re-nationalise the railways". But this false solution can only prevent people from understanding:
It’s the same frenzied competition of each against all which that drives capitalism to pollute the air and the water, to devastate the rain forests, to disrupt the whole planet’s climate. And in the final analysis it’s the same struggle of each against all which sharpens old ethnic hatreds, pushes more d ethnic hatreds, pushes more and more local and regional powers to make war on neighbouring states, and compels the world’s biggest powers to engage in more and more military adventures, like the bloodbaths in Iraq and Yugoslavia.
In brief: this whole society is itself a runaway train pulling humanity towards catastrophe. But the red light has not been passed. It is still possible to change direction if. those who have built the train with their labour realise their power - if the world working class fights for its interests, gathers its forces, and revives its old project of a society based on production for human need. And despite Blair’s proclamation that "the class war is over", it continues to smoulder. Not only that: the workers are more and more faced with the need to struggle over issues which affect the common welfare: like the Tower Hamlets housing workers who struck over the council’s attempts to close neighbourhood housing offices; like the Paris metro workers who struck against physical attacks on their colleagues; like the 1300 Ford workers, Asian, black and white, who walked out in response to management racism; like the train drivers who are prepared to take action for increased safety.
These are small but significant signs that the working class can use its collective strength to oppose the sacrifices that capitalism demands. And if it can do this on a local scale, then it can do it on a world scale, because the working class everywhere has the same interests in the face of this system of death and disaster.
International Communist Current
8.10.99
Supplement to World Revolution number 228. World Revolution is the ICC’s paper in Britain. For contact, write to BM Box 869, London WC1N 3XX.
Caught between the anvil of the local mafia gangs under Maskhalov and Bassev, who are wrangling over who controls the country, and the Russian military, often forced to join up behind one or the other, nearly two million people are hostages and victims of this new imperialist war. The bombing goes on, devastating entire villages. Yeltsin, a blood-stained buffoon who is a worthy successor to Stalin, has been using one of the classic Stalinist recipes for mass repression: you encircle an area and massacre everyone in it.
Contrary to the previous Chechen war, the government this time has ‘prepared’ the Russian population with a repulsive propaganda barrage about the Chechen ‘terrorists’ (Chechen=terrorist and vice versa). All the Chechens are thus held responsible for the terrorist bombings and thus for their own misfortune. With the gross lies being spewed up by Yeltsin’s ‘western-style, democratic government’, the current regime shows its direct continuity with the methods of Stalinist terror.
Russian imperialism caught up in its own decomposition
Once again then, horror stalks the Caucasus, victim of the desperate plight of the Russian bourgeoisie. Let’s not forget the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of deaths, Chechen and Russian, claimed during the fighting between Moscow and Doudaev between January 1995 and the end of 1996. The unleashing of the first Chechen war enabled Moscow to impose its authority over a whole series of republics of the former USSR which had an urge towards independence. Chechen served as an example in a particularly taut situation in which Russia was trying to prevent the explosion of its empire through the creation of the CIS.
The Caucasus region, in which the combat between Armenia and Azerbaijan had blown up even before the collapse of the eastern bloc, has long been a powder keg. It came to the fore when Georgia quit the CIS and then was torn by war against Abkhazia ann by war against Abkhazia and Ossetia which were still under the control of Moscow. Now Russian imperialism is again caught in a spiral of mass destruction. There is a lot at stake for the Russian government. First of all, it has to keep control of an ever-deteriorating political situation at home, given the accelerating decomposition of the central power, the incapacity of the Yeltsin clique to maintain a credible image, and the growth of rivalries between mafia bosses, of whom Yeltsin is a primary representative. In one sense, especially with the presidential elections coming up, the Chechen operation is a way of diverting attention from these problems and giving the regime a strong and decisive image.
But Chechnya is itself of considerable importance. As in 1995 it is vital for Moscow to issue a warning to all the republics who are thinking of breaking away from Moscow, since as Russia gets weaker, the push towards secession gets stronger. And this time around, Moscow has drawn lessons from its 1995 defeat: for the moment it is only trying to control part of the country, the region around Grozny, with the long term aim of installing a puppet government.
Thus Russia has to keep hold of a region which is strategically vital. Chechnya is at the centre of a line, still not fully controlled by the Runot fully controlled by the Russian bourgeoisie, which goes from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and which is a defensive frontier and above all one of the few traditional means of access to the Mediterranean and the southern seas. To allow an independent Chechnya to carry out its own foreign policy would open a major hole in Russia’s line of defences.
But another aspect of the Chechen war is the need for Russia to keep control over oil reserves and the Caucasian pipeline which goes through Chechnya. This is of increasing importance to Moscow and what remains of its economy and its army, above all from the strategic-military point of view. A loss of control of its own oil reserves would be a threat to Russia’s independence and would open the door wide to the machinations of the great powers, especially the USA which is out to block the growing influence of Germany in the region.
The complicity of the great powers
It is certain that the big western powers, in particular the European ones, would like to get their fingers in the Caucasian pie and can’t help but savour the difficulties of Russian imperialism in that area. During the wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 90s, we could already see Germany, hand in hand y see Germany, hand in hand with Turkey, trying to discretely pull strings in order to strengthen its position in the region. However, these same great powers do not have an interest in the total collapse of the CIS. This is why, despite the hypocritical declarations of their politicians, the advanced bourgeoisies do not have the immediate intention of getting mixed up in what Clinton already called in 1995 "an internal matter for Russia". On his recent return from a ‘mediating’ mission in Moscow, the European commissioner for foreign affairs declared laconically that Russia was not at all "ready" to accept any foreign intervention, even diplomatic.
What seems to ‘shock’ the leaders of the ‘civilised’ world is the Russians’ methods. Not the mass bombings, not all the brutal measures against the population - after all, they are still fresh from the butchery in Serbia and Kosovo - but the fact that it can all be seen so easily. Since the beginning of the war Clinton has advised Yeltsin to be less obvious about it. The French bourgeoisie, through its minister of the interior has been whispering in the Russians’ ears that they should "pay attention to the way things are perceived". Meanwhile the flower of international bourgeois repression, the iourgeois repression, the interior and justice ministers of the G8, have been meeting in Moscow while the war rages to talk about the problem of international crime. They have had no problem with giving Russian intervention a legal gloss by adopting a resolution against "international terrorism" as demanded by Russia.
The cynicism of this class of gangsters knows no limits. They are the terrorists and the gangsters, and the planet runs red with the blood of the massacres they have perpetrated in the name of humanity and democracy and anti-terrorism. Whatever suits them in their flight into chaos and destruction, they will use. It’s not just Russia which is trying to shoot its way out of its decline, but the entire capitalist world.
KW
The October military coup in Pakistan marked a serious intensification of instability in South Asia. The new military leader General Pervaiz Musharraf reassured the 'international community' about his peaceful intentions and the military's determination to try and rescue the collapsing economy and to fight endemic corruption. But, this was only cover for a bitter struggle within the Pakistani bourgeoisie, above all over imperialist strategy.
Pakistan is being savaged by the deepening world economic crisis. Tens of millions live in utter poverty. The economy is bankrupt and survives on international loans. Foreign debt stands at £19.9 billion. The ruling class wallows in corruption and is divided by sharpening struggles, as it picks over the corpse of the national economy. For example,Hasin Sharif, the deposed prime minister, is reckoned to have given his supports and backers £245 million in cheap loans from the bank, whilst the Prime Minister before him Benazir Bhutto has been charged with corruption. Meanwhile it is the workers and poor peasants of Pakistan that is suffering as a result of the dead end capitalism is in.
Pakistani was born out of the imperialist machinations after World War 2, wracked, by religious, ethnic and tribal tensions. Following decades of economic crisis, with the pressures of fulfilling a role in the US bloc, and previous military take-overs behind them, the bourgeoisie in Pakistan, like those in many other weaker countries, is in a state of decomposition.
"With the loss of any concretely realisable project, except ‘saving the furniture’, in the face of the economic crisis, the lack of perspective facing the bourgeoisie tends to lead to losing sight of the interests of the state or of the national capital as a whole.
The political life of the bourgeoisie, in the weaker countries, tends to be reduced to the struggle of different fractions or even cliques for power or merely survival. This in turn becomes an enormous obstacle to the establishing of stable alliances or even of a coherent foreign policy, giving way to chaos, unpredictability and even madness in relations between states.
The dead end of the capitalist system leads to the break up of some of those states which were established late... or with artificial frontiers such as in Africa, leading to an explosion of wars aimed at drawing frontieof wars aimed at drawing frontiers anew." (Report on imperialist conflicts, International Review 98).
Sharif and his fraction's placing of their interests above that of the state and national capital certainly accelerated the decline of the economy. The anti-corruption and economic polices of the new armed-forces-lead ruling fraction, based on imposing austerity on the working class and poor masses, received a wide welcome amongst the bourgeoisie in Pakistan and abroad.
However, it was the question of imperialist orientation that was the determining factor. The decision of the Sharif fraction to withdraw from the parts of Kashmir that Pakistan had occupied in May and to try and improve relations with imperialist rival India, under US pressure, was more than the armed forces and other bourgeois fractions could stand.
This rejection of the US's attempts to stabilise the situation in the region, faced with the accentuation of tensions between Pakistan and India (two nuclear powers) is an demonstration of the consequences of the collapse of the imperialist blocs. With the end of the Cold War the Pakistani bourgeoisie has been pursuing it's own imperialist ambitions without too much regard for US interests. It is no accident that Musharraf should lead the coup. He planned and led Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir.
Speaking after the coup he stated Pakistan's determination to pursue its imperialist aims towards India. "We shall continue our unflinching moral, political and diplomatic support to our Kashmiri brethren in their struggle to achieve their right of self-determination. India must honour the UN resolutions and its own commitment to the people of Kashmir. It must also end its repression of the Kashmiri people and respect their fundamental human rights" (The Dawn, a Pakistan English language newspaper, 18.10.99).
He also made clear his fraction's committment to the use of nuclear weapons. "Last year, we were compelled to respond to India's nuclear tests in order to restore strategic balance in the interest of our national security and regional peace and stability" (ibid).
He also emphasized Pakistan's continuing close relations with its main regional imperialist backer China. "We will maintain and further reinforce our traditional and time tested friendship and co-operation with China." (ibid).
The same speech also underlined that "the strengthening of brotherly ties wiening of brotherly ties with the Islamic countries will be a central pillar of our foreign policy". Of particular interest are the developing relations with Turkey, another former firm ally of the US playing its own imperialist game. Musharraf told a Turkish journalist that his first visit would be to Turkey. These imperialist orientations will worsen tensions throughout the continent.
There was a cautious response from the great powers. Britain and the Commonwealth have suspended Pakistan. The US has stopped some aid, but also made some friendly remarks. However, behind the scenes they are very concerned: the US to see Pakistan going alone and trying to reduce the US influence in the region, and Britain to see the main rival of its regional imperialist ally India becoming more belligerent.
The Indian bourgeoisie has expressed its grave concerns and put its armed forces on high alert. Unofficially it has expressed its understanding of the real meaning of the coup "Says a senior government official, if the army coup took place partly because of the army's dissatisfaction with Sharif's wilting under international pressure over Kargil, then the new army rule is likely to take a more confrontational stand with India" (Outlook online, an Indian magazine hostile toIndian magazine hostile to Pakistan).
This can only feed the insane idea of a 'final war' between India and Pakistan being spread by the Indian bourgeoisie.
This madness is matched by the growing justification for nuclear war in the Pakistani military and bourgeoisie, under the guise of a Muslim's duty to "strike terror into the heart of the infidel", ie India.
The perspective for the region is grave and underlines the perspective laid out in the leaflet issued by our nucleus in India against the war in Kashmir.
"The present war may not spread... but it can only be a temporary reprieve. The desperation of both Indian and Pakistani ruling gangs, the bitterness of their conflict, the determination of the Chinese bourgeoisie to keep Indian ambitions in check and the growing free-for-all and rivalry amongst the world's main powers - all this is bound to explode in yet another war in this area. Sooner rather than later. With a far higher level of death and destruction" (WR 227)
Phil
Despite the wishes of the ruling class, the class war is not over. In fact over the past 18 months there has been an intensification of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Our television screens have not been full of pictures of struggling workers, but, then you’d hardly expect the capitalist media to tell you the truth. An obvious example of this is the nurses strike in the Irish republic. Involving 27,000 workers, it’s the biggest strike since the 1920s and yet has hardly been mentioned in the media.
Internationally the working class is struggling to defend itself. May 1998 saw half a million workers on strike in Denmark. Since then workers in Europe, America and other parts of world have been in struggle.
In France transport workers have struck against their appalling working conditions, a struggle that spread from Paris to Lyon and Marseilles. Other workers have struck against the attacks that the used the 35 hour week campaign to disguise.
In Belgium there have been struggles in the private sector (VW in the private sector (VW cars, banks etc) and public sector (the post, public transport, etc) against falling wages, lay offs. Whilst in Britain struggles have broken out at Fords, the Post Office, council workers, construction
In America, workers in health, construction, education, airlines, car plants and other have struggled faced with attacks on wages and condition. In South Africa there have been important struggles in the public sector.
In South Korea car workers and other have fought to defend themselves against the price they were expected to pay for the crisis there, that is, with attacks on their jobs and wages.
These struggles are clearly not at the same level as the struggles of the 70s and 80's, but they are still significant. The very fact that the ruling class has blacked out information about struggles is particularly relevant. In 1995/96 the media was full of information about the struggles in France, Germany, Belgium and the US. Then they wanted workers to see these union-controlled struggles in order to boast the unions image. Today's blackout reflects the fact that the working class is becoming more militant.
Another reality that they want tonother reality that they want to keep concealed is the growing number of smaller unofficial strikes. Many of these are against deals agreed by the unions. For example: the strike by 11,600 teachers in Detroit, was not only against the wishes of the unions, who were negotiating a deal with the administration, but also illegal according to Michigan state law. In France, the struggle by public transport workers in Paris began as an unofficial strike against union wishes.
The spontaneity of this strike is not an isolated event. The struggle by drivers on Belgium railways (SNCB) rapidly spread from depot to depot. In Britain recent strikes by postal workers in Lothian, Scotland, and by workers on Parcel Force in Canning Town, London, were spontaneous reactions to attacks.
The way in which the struggles developed, particularly in France and the USA during the period of the Balkans war, is particularly important. In New York, on the 12th of May, between 25-50,000 city workers took part in a demonstration against attacks by the administration. Though controlled by the unions, it demonstrated the workers’ discontent. On this demonstration workers were keen to take the ICC's leaflet against the Balkans war, and many who walked passed came back when they learnt that our lhen they learnt that our leaflet was about the war.
International: the struggle and capitalism’s attacks
The ICC does not want to exaggerate any aspect of the situation, because it is clear that struggles are still on a small scale and unfolding in a very hesitant and slow manner. Nevertheless, it is important for workers to understand that what they feel is not some isolated desperation but a reflection of the international working class's growing discontent.
The combativity can only grow with the continuation of capitalism’s war on workers’ conditions of life and work. Millions of jobs have been wiped out in the Far East, Latin America and in Russia by the effects of the devastating crisis in the Far East. Tens of thousands have also been laid off in the main industrial countries as well. In the US, on average, 36,000 manufacturing jobs have gone each month this year. In Western Europe, the recent mergers between Renault and Nissan, are expected to lead to 11% of the workforce in these companies loosing their jobs. Japan has the highest levels of unemployment since WW2. It is not only unemployment that workers face. Their working conditions are also being put under pressure in tso being put under pressure in the name of 'flexibility'. Generalised insecurity is the norm for those in work, as is part time and temporary work. On top of that, workers are faced with the slashing of social spending on health, education etc, as governments cut costs.
The ruling class does not only attack the living and working conditions of the proletariat, it also mounts ideological attacks mystify the reality of capitalism. There is, for example, the whole campaign that says we are all equal ‘stakeholders’ in society. However, the main weapon against workers’ growing resistance is the unions. The unions divide up struggles, keeping workers trapped in their own sector or industry. There has also been the increased use of ‘militant’ rank and file unionism, attempting to give unions’ credibility when workers are becoming suspicious of what unions do to their struggles. A good example of this is the electricians in Britain (see article on page 3).
Above all, on top of the traps laid by the unions, workers still have a lack of confidence in their ability to struggle. The examples that we have given show that, internationally, the capitalist class are sustaining their attacks on the working class, but also that the working class is makin that the working class is making a response. Workers should be in no doubt that their only strength lies in the growing struggles, which can only begin to have an impact if they become more massive and under workers’ own control.
WR
The fall of the Berlin Wall led to a media orgy on a scale not seen before in this century. For 3 days there was an almost uninterrupted flow of images, showing nearly 3 million East Germans crossing the wall and invading the West of the city of Berlin. In this first phase there was no need for propaganda. The images spoke for themselves; the bourgeisie’s message was directly attached to them and hammered home implicitly: "This historic day marks the total and definitive victory of democracy over totalitarianism", "People of the world, rejoice in this glorious day when capitalism has demonstrated its absolute superiority over the socialist regimes".
In the weeks and months which followed the most euphoric declarations and promises bombarded us from the ‘great and the good’: the end of the cold was going to usher in a "new world order" where all the countries of the world "North and South" would be able to "prosper and live in harmony" (as US president , George Bush, said). Gorbachev himself added another layer by declaring that a "new era, free from threat, from terror, stronger in the search for justice" was dawning. According to these eulogists for the capitalist system, relations between states would "from now on be founded on respect and co-operation", etc.
But, above all, the bourgeoisie attacked the working class directly with a sustained and intensive campaign of brainwashing, the effects of which are still being felt today. In spreading the greatest lie in history, according to which the collapse of the Stalinist regimes was the collapse of communism, the ruling class launched itself into a gigantic attempt to weaken the working class and to annihilate its class consciousness. In this way it sought to destroy in embryo any will to radically and definitively call its rule into question, as well as any idea that there can be an alternative to its barbaric system. Its aim was to eradicate the revolutionary perspective once and for all.
The causes for the collapse of the stalinist regimes
The collapse of the stalinist regimes was the most important event since the end of the Second World War and the historic resurgence of proletarian combat at the end of the 1960s. It was the first time in history that a country, the head of an imperialist bloc, collapsed without resistance, without open world war or a revolutionary development. This fall was the conclusion of a whole historic process. The capitalist state in Russia was reconstructed on the ruins of the 1917 proletarian revolution which had eliminated the Tsarist bourgeoisie. Neither the latter, nor any part of the ‘classic’ bourgeoisie, was able to take control of the counter-revolution in Russia which was produced by the defeat of the world revolution.
It was the bureaucratic party-state resulting from the internal degeneration of the revolution in the USSR which carried it out. The Russian bourgeoisie was recomposed from the stalinist counter-revolution and monopolised all the means of production through the state which became an all-encompassing monster. Straight away the USSR, arriving too late on the capitalist world scene in the period of over-production on a planetary scale, was hit by obvious economic backwardness. Its seizure of the ‘popular democracies’ at the end of the Second World War, which elevated it to the rank of leader of one of the two imperialist blocs, accentuated the tendency which had allowed it to survive since its origin: "the ever-greater concentration of the economy in the hands of the state at the service of the war economy." (International Review 34, p.2).
So, because the eastern bloc couldn’t rival the western bloc, its only resource faced with the economic and military pressure from the west was to mobilise its whole productive apparatus for military production. The considerable deepening of the crisis throughout the 1980s bled it dry. Lacking the power to compete with the opposing bloc, and given the impossibility of a world war because of the global resistance of the world workial resistance of the world working class which would not allow itself to be mobilised to defend the state as it had been in the 1930s, the eastern bloc imploded. But this is not the only factor to take account of in the disappearance of the eastern bloc. In effect, as we have already written:
"The most obvious, and the most widely known, characteristic of the Eastern bloc countries - the one moreover which is the basis for the myth of their socialist nature - is the extreme statification of their economies. (...) state capitalism is not limited to those countries.
This phenomenon springs above all from the conditions for the capitalist mode of production’s survival in its decadent period (...) While the tendency towards state capitalism is thus a universal, historical fact, it does not affect all countries in the same way." (ibid, p.4).
In fact, in the advanced countries this tendency is manifested by an interweaving of the ‘private’ and state sectors, allowing the bourgeoisie to avoid being dispossessed of its capital and privileges and to keep competition and the sanction of the market functioning.
"In countries under Stalinist regimes, the system of the ‘Nomenklatura’, where virtually all economic responsibility is tied to party status, the obstacles to improving the productive apparatus’ competivity develop on a far vaster scale. Whereas the ‘mixed’ economies of the developed Western countries oblige state enterprises, and even state administrations, to have at least a minimum degree of concern for productivity and profitability, the form of state capitalism prevalent under Stalinist regimes has the characteristic of stripping the ruling class of any sense of responsibility.(...)
In such conditions, these countries’ economies, most of which are already backward, are particularly ill-equipped to confront the capitalist crisis and the sharpening competition it provokes on the world market." (‘Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the Eastern countries’, International Review 60, p.8, 1990).
History will have to overturn the great lie of this century, which has been hammered home since the fall of the Berlin Wall, that it was communism which collapsed in the USSR and Eastern Europe when it was the most brutal and instructive manifestation of a capitalist economy in crisis which has been tonomy in crisis which has been torn to pieces. The stalinist way of managing the economy was founded on the ferocious exploitation of the labour power of workers.
"But this ferocity is not generally concerned with increasing the productivity of labour power. It appears essentially in the workers’ wretched living conditions and the brutality with which their economic demands are met." (ibid).
The stupidity of the bourgeoisie’s promises
The least that can be said is that, since the beginning of the ‘era of peace and prosperity for humanity’ opened with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Eastern bloc and the USSR, this era has been revealed as being more the ‘era of wars and economic crises’. We have unceasingly denounced ‘the peace which prepares new wars’.
In effect, faced with the bourgeoisie’s brazen lies,"the end of the division of the world into two imperialist constellations has put an end to neither antagonistic relations between capitalist nations nor military confrontations which are the consequence of them. The truth is quite the contrary. With the disappearance ary. With the disappearance of the blocs, a period of military confrontations and militarism has been opened." (Revolution Internationale, no.198, Feb 1991).
Throughout the decade we have seen an orgy of local conflicts and wars. Militarism has never been so prominent, nor the manufacture and sale of armaments, nor the threat of nuclear proliferation so dangerous.
Barely eight months after the fall of the Wall, the Gulf ‘crisis’ broke and six months later the very democratic ‘international community’ unleashed a bloodbath which was more efficient in extermination than any conflict during the ‘cold war’. According to official estimates there were between 300,000 and 500,000 Iraqi dead. The first ‘breach’ of the promised new era of peace, the Gulf War was the start of a spiral of bloody military conflicts and chaos which have not spared any corner or continent of the planet, and in which conflicts of imperialist interests have been unleashed everywhere, in the permanent war of each against all.
The disappearance of the eastern bloc was also the end of the western bloc. The USA rapidly became aware of this in the months which followed the disappearance of the easte disappearance of the eastern bloc, since their former allies started to show clearer and clearer impulses to ‘independence’. They attempted to disengage from American tutelage in order to play their own cards in the world imperialist arena, free from the iron grip of the blocs. The outbreak of the Gulf War was fundamentally motivated by the will of the USA to constrain its old allies to support it anew, by agreement or by force, at the expense of Iraq.
The Yugoslav conflict which broke out in 1992 is another confirmation of the position we have advanced since 1989 on the development of chaos and barbarity all over the globe. While the Iraqi corpses were still warm, Yugoslavia, in the process of dislocation provoked by the shock wave of the disappearance of the eastern bloc, became a free for all. The great powers which, according to their own strategic imperialist interests have continually fanned the flames, dismembered the territory, fomented and covered up the unending atrocities in this region at the heart of Europe. With the last war in Kosovo, this region has become one of the most militarised in the world, like those such as the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The great powers have been quick to rely on their respective pitbulls, militias or local pitbulls, militias or local armed bands in their pay, in order to settle their scores. So much for the ‘peace dividend’! It is the logic of capitalism which makes the great powers continually encourage the renewal of ethnic antagonisms in the service of their interests. This war, like those which are racking the ex-USSR, Chechnya, Dagestan, Africa and even East Timor, show once more that capitalism is war. There is no question of the ‘harmony’ between nations predicted by the cheerleaders for the capitalist system in 1989. Every man for himself is the only law, to conserve or absorb zones of influence and hunting grounds which has been one of the characteristics of imperialism since the existence of the two imperialist blocs. So barbarism, relations of military force, incessant destabilisation which all powers unleash against others, reigns supreme spreading suffering, death and massacres without hesitation.
The bankruptcy of capitalism
And what of the ‘dividend’ of the end of the cold war on the economic level promised by the bourgeoisie? Where is the promised economic prosperity, the ‘end of sacrifices’, when the largest enterprises themselves, even whole sectors are laying workers off en masse? According tf en masse? According to the ILO in 1996 the number of unemployed and under-employed had already reached the billion mark. Where is the ‘share of growth’, when poverty is continually growing in the working class, when living conditions are becoming ever more insupportable, when working conditions are increasingly precarious, allowing capital to exploit the workers to the limit according to its needs? What has developed massively in the 1990s has been under-employment and unemployment and the policy of reducing various social benefits as well as the lowering of nominal wages etc. This reality doesn’t only make a nonsense of the promises of ‘prosperity for all’, it is revealing about something more profound: the bankruptcy of the capitalist system as a whole.
As soon as the so-called ‘communist bloc’ collapsed the bourgeoisie enthused about the new Eldorado which the markets of Eastern Europe appeared to be. Where are these fantastic markets that were to spring up like mushrooms in the territories ‘freed’ from the old Russian bloc? The complete decay of the industrial infrastructure and the transport anarchy immediately shows how absurd such a perspective was. Between 1989 and 1997 Russia lost 70% of its industrial production!
Not only has the ‘liberation’ of the Eastern European economies not brought the promised ‘second wind’ to the world economy, but, on the contrary, history has shown that the collapse of the stalinist states was nothing but the collapse of one face of the world capitalist system, and that it is nothing but a symptom of the incurable illness of this world system. It announces that further violent economic and social upheavals are inescapable.
The recession of 1991-3 showed that the flight into credit is less efficient at relaunching production each time. Japan is a case in point. All the sectors which had previously escaped the crisis were affected in turn - information technology, telecommunications, armaments, banking. The impossibility of massive capital investment in production brought unbridled speculation, and this permanent cheating of the laws of the system can only increase its fragility. Capitalism is in crisis and facing the permanent threat of chain reactions, provoking economic and social devastation, like those in South East Asia. In 1997 the Asian ‘tigers’ and ‘dragons’, which had been presented as ‘pioneering’ economies, showed that the new ‘youth’ of capitalism was bankrupt with the crash. The shockwave rith the crash. The shockwave reached Brazil, Venezuela and, once again, Russia.
At the same time the legendary ‘economic health’ of the old models - Germany, Japan, Switzerland - caved in. Faced with the crisis the ruling class is making a permanent effort to push the consequences of the contradictions of its system to the peripheral zones of the globe. It is there that, at the moment, they break out most spectacularly, taking the form of collapses of entire parts of the economy. This cannot, however, prevent the crisis from coming back regularly to hit at the heart of the system with greater violence and more damage each time.
The only response is the class struggle and the perspective of communism
In presenting the collapse of stalinism as the collapse of communism, the ruling class is obviously trying first of all to hide the fact that this was only one of the manifestations of the bankruptcy of capitalism itself. But above all, it has been striving to the utmost to cry at the top of its voice that it is a question of the bankruptcy of any perspective for the revolutionary overturning of its system, as with the ‘end of the class struggle’.
In appearance, the immediate reality, above all at the beginning of the 1990s, seemed to prove it right. As we predicted at the time, the events of 1989 would be paid for by a great reflux of workers struggle, above all at the level of consciousness within the working class. While stalinism was one of the worst enemies of the working class, this didn’t mean that its disappearance would automatically create the conditions for an advance in the proletariat’s struggles.
On the contrary, because it collapsed, not under the pressure of workers’ struggles, and without the proletariat being able to develop the concrete denunciation of the lie of stalinist barbarity on its own terrain, it died without being condemned, without having undergone the judgement of the class struggle. Its death has, on the contrary, served to maintain and make even more powerful the lie that it was an incarnation of the proletariat’s historic struggle! Because of that, these events, added to the bourgeoisie’s media barrage, have effectively precipitated a profound disorientation in the working class internationally, a retreat in consciousness, a loss of confidence in its own strength and in the fact that its combats represent the only response to capitalist misery. This retreat is still affery. This retreat is still affecting the working class today.
But communism is not an abstract ideal. Because the contradictions of the capitalist system have condemned it historically and reveal a little more each day its inability to contain the productive forces it has engendered, communism has become a material necessity. This affirmation of marxism has never been so topical. And this very capitalist society can no longer escape it whatever the immediate balance of forces between the classes: it produces within itself its own gravedigger, the proletariat. Capitalism cannot exist without the proletariat and the proletariat’s struggle against capitalist exploitation contains within it, whether consciously or not, the overcoming of this system through its revolutionary overthrow.
Each time the working class suffers such a retreat, the ruling class, taking its desires for reality, shouts in triumph that it has resolved the contradictions of society and eliminated the class struggle. Until the proletariat, once again, reminds it with renewed class militancy.
The retreat suffered by the working class in 1989 is nothing compared to other defeats experienced in the past. After the terrible defeat of the revolutionary weat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, counter-revolution weighed on society for fifty years and the ruling class made the same triumphant cries in the 1950s and 1960s as today. Until the international awakening of the proletariat in 1968 disillusioned it and there were new massive waves of workers’ struggles on every continent in the 1970s and 1980s.
Today the working class has not suffered a defeat comparable to that in the 1920s. Its strength is intact and the proletariat of the central countries especially, is not ready to allow itself to be mobilised in a new world war, as it was in the 1930s, in the name of ideological justifications such as anti-fascism or national defence.
Not only is the general historic course still open to class confrontations, but the signs of a slow but certain recovery of class struggles have also accumulated in recent years. On the level of consciousness, the lies about peace and prosperity in capitalism haven’t long to run. The violence of the economic crisis and the attacks that the bourgeoisie cannot avoid continually dealing out to the working class, force the latter to take up the path of struggle again. And the bourgeoisie also knows this (even if it is careful what it says!). It is no accident that it is deploying accident that it is deploying a whole arsenal in order to try and pre-empt the inevitable proliferation of new experiences of significant struggles (see ‘The left in government’ in International Review 98), at the same time it is leading incessant campaigns to try and convince workers that they are powerless and must rely on the capitalist state to defend them (see also page 2 on Paddington rail crash).
The spectre of communism has come back to haunt the bourgeoisie today. The economic bankruptcy and the ever increasing barbarity of this system reveals this necessity in ways that can less and less be hidden. But above all, the violence of the blows against the working class, the necessity for it to fight in response, creates the conditions for it to rediscover its consciousness and its confidence in itself. These are forces at work which will make the proletarian revolution and communism not only a necessity, but also a possibility.
SB
But when the Chancellor presented his November pre-Budget report it was against the backdrop of some apparently impressive economic indicators. Unemployment was at a 20 year low of 4.2%; the public spending budget showed a surplus of £9.5bn. The OECD produced a glowing report on the health of the British economy, holding out the prospect of higher economic growth of 2.7% coupled with lower unemployment and inflation despite strong increases in household wealth and pay. Indeed, "The forecasts paint a golden scenario for the Labour government moving towards the next election" (Financial Times, 17/11/99).
Just like the USA, Britain is heading towards a 'Goldilocks' economy, wards a 'Goldilocks' economy, a land of free porridge for all. For some people in Britain this is already true! Figures released at the end of October on chief executive pay showed that, "nearly a third of chief executives in the FTSE 350 secured remuneration package increases of more than 20%." (FT, 27/10/99, p4). This is five times the national average. The highest paid bosses are in the pharmaceutical sector where on average they 'earn' £3.64m each a year. Contrast this with the news that next year the state pension is going up by 75 pence a week and you get some idea of the state of capitalist society in Britain today.
So was all the talk of a new recession misguided? Is capitalism now out of the woods? Is Britain following the USA down the road of growth without inflation? This is what the bourgeoisie would like workers to think, that with the 'death of communism' capitalism is triumphant. Once again we are being treated to a new sleight of hand. The claims of renewed growth and stability hide profound underlying contradictions. As we note in the latest International Review,
"These growth rates hide this fragility, just as they mask a new historical aberration - from the economic standpoint: the fact that today, the rate of savings in the USA is negative, in other words American households overall have merican households overall have more debts than savings!"
This has not escaped the 'specialists'.
"American industry is on the verge of bankruptcy. This is incompatible with the rise in share values on Wall Street, whose valuation is at its highest since 1926: expected profit is higher than at any time since the war. All this is untenable, but vital in maintaining the confidence of households and the impression of wealth which encourages them to consume more and more on credit. The savings rate has become negative, a phenomenon not seen since the Great Depression. How can the (inevitable) touchdown be made a soft one?" (L'Expansion, October '99).
"The official indicator of recession - the negative growth of production - has once again been hidden, the recession has been pushed back with the same palliatives: debt, a headlong flight into credit and speculation...The situation of the world economy is thus more fragile and pregnant with the next 'purges' which will once again leave masses of workers on the streets." (IR99 "Economic Crisis: The abyss behind 'uninterrupted growth'").
Growing exploitation of the working class
At the same time we are being told that the unlikely driving force behind the British 'recovery' is the manufacturing sectecovery' is the manufacturing sector. A report released by the Institute of Manufacturing is given as further evidence that this sector, hit hard by the strength of the pound, is turning around, and goes on to explain how.
"Wage growth in manufacturing in the year to July was almost entirely paid for out of productivity increases. Annual growth in manufacturing productivity has risen above 3% this year. This has helped to drive the annual growth of unit labour costs - the cost of labour per item of output - below 1% from 4% in 1998" (FT, 15/1/99, p5).
Another set of figures from the Office of National Statistics has revealed that in the year to September the manufacturing sector shed 156,000 jobs with the AEEU engineering union predicting another 50,000 to go next year. Taken together these two facts show another way the bourgeoisie has been able to avoid open recession, by making less workers work harder. Once again the proletariat is being forced to pay for the crisis through higher rates of exploitation.
For those workers thrown onto the dole things are about to get even worse. The Labour government are proud of their record in reducing unemployment, and especially of the New Deal scheme where 18-24 year old claimants are offered the 'choice' of work experience, training, education - or having t training, education - or having their benefits stopped. In his pre-Budget report Gordon Brown announced the extension of the New Deal to all long-term unemployed from April 2001. The aim is to fill the "...one million vacancies spread around the country. We want better matching of the unemployed to these jobs and we want people to take up the opportunities available." (FT, 10/11/99).
But the government's own figures for the New Deal show that only 43% of people leaving the scheme find "sustained, unsubsidised jobs", 17% leave early due to legitimate reasons and 13% are transferred to other schemes. Meanwhile the remaining 28% "disappear". No wonder unemployment is falling - it’s the old trick of calling the unemployed "job-seekers", of taking the long term unemployed off the official lists, of counting people with short-term, part-time, precarious jobs as part of the active workforce. In short, of making the unemployed disappear.
It has not escaped the attention of bourgeois commentators that
"...it is clear that a revolution has taken place during the past two years. Britain now operates workfare...It's a huge cultural - and economic - change; and one that successive Conservative governments never dared attempt." (FT, 10/11/99).
New Labour have been able to continue and escalate the attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class. This is why they were put in power and it shows that they are the faithful servants of capital and the enemy of the proletariat.
Finally, the Chancellor announced increased incentives for investment in new technology sectors such as the internet and telecommunications. This is touted as one of the most dynamic and growing sectors of the economy, one that fits the vision of a modern Britain leading the way into the new millennium. The computer company ICL has announced the creation of 1,000 new jobs in the e-commerce sector. In Liverpool a new technology park promises to create 4,000 jobs. The Bank of Scotland has a call centre there already, employing 1,300 workers. In fact, call centres now employ nationally some 400,000 workers.
But the very growth of such a sector is symbolic of capitalism’s real plight: increasingly, capitalist trade is based on selling air, whether in the form of speculation on the future or the development of largely unproductive ‘service’ industries. This does not alter the fact that those who work in these industries experience all the realities of the proletarian condition. The strike by 4,000 BT call centre staff at the end of November - the first national strike at BT for 12 ynational strike at BT for 12 years - was proof of that. The strikers complained of the management culture of intimidation, bullying, threats of disciplinary action if targets are not met, understaffing and increased use of contract agency staff.
The BT strike is also part of a more general increase in combativity amongst workers. In the last few months we have seen a number of strikes involving postal workers, electricians, the Ford car workers, bus drivers in West London etc. A number of these struggles have begun as spontaneous movements, not as tame affairs manipulated by the trade unions. They come as a timely reminder that the class struggle is the workers’ only means of defence. Illusions in the well-being of the capitalist economy can only paralyse the struggle. The perspective facing workers everywhere is the intensification of attacks on their living and working conditions; the only valid response can be to intensify their own class resistance.
Trevor
Reality has demonstrated again and again that the end of the old bloc system in no way meant an end to war and that the "new world order" promised by president Bush was nothing but a lie. Today the whole planet is militarised and armed to the teeth; there are around fifty bloody conflicts going on at the same time, conflicts in which imperialist powers large and small slug it out, while whole populations are subject to the threat of extermination and mass exodus.
The cynicism of the great powers
Since October 1, the new war in Chechnya perpetrated by the Russian army has proved to be even worse than the first intervention in the region in 1994-6, and the region in 1994-6, and that one resulted in 100,000 deaths. The frontiers have been closed; the civilian population, isolated and encircled, has been massacred blindly by missiles, fragmentation bombs and, according to Brzezinski, former adviser to president Carter (Le Monde 18 November), the "fuel air" bombs which were used to such murderous effect in the Gulf war. At the beginning of this new intervention, Russia justified this butchery with the claim that it was seeking to wipe out the bases of "Chechen terrorism". Today, backed by a Sacred Union of the bourgeoisie which goes from Stalinists like Zuganov to the champions of 'democracy' like the major of Moscow, Louijkov, Russia is openly proclaiming that its aim is to reconquer Chechnya and bring it back into its fold.
The western bourgeoisie pretends to be concerned about the fate of the local population and has remonstrated with Russia at the recent summit of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) held in Istanbul. The sending of a few OSCE observers to Chechnya (which Russia accepted without difficulty) was in fact no more than a humanitarian pretext and has changed nothing. This was a summit of hypocrisy.
The Moscow government promised a 10% reduction in non-nuclear weapons, therenon-nuclear weapons, there was a charter proclaiming a general de-escalation of military spending, and in the meantime the summit closed its eyes to the intensification of the bombing of Chechnya. And above all, as with East Timor, we had the vague disapproval of the bourgeois 'community' two months after the massacres began. Why? Here, in contrast to Kosovo, the 'right to interfere' or the principle of 'humanitarian intervention' have never been invoked, even though it's patently obvious that Yeltsin and his prime minister Putin are using the same methods as Milosevic.
The fact is that Russia has enjoyed the total complicity of the big western powers who have coldly, cynically stood by while the Chechen population has been murdered en masse. This is one more proof that humanitarian arguments are just excuses for the use of armed force. As for the so-called Non-Governmental Organisations, which have always served as the bridgeheads for military intervention by the great powers, they have been almost totally absent, even Medecins Sans Frontieres which has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but which seems to have looked the other way as far as Chechnya is concerned. Behind their statements of indignation, all the western leaders have wanted, covered, and supported the Russian offensive in the northern Caucasus. There has beerthern Caucasus. There has been a wide consensus among the western bourgeoisie not to cause problems for Russia and to allow it to carry on with its methodical slaughter. The western powers want at all cost to avoid the disintegration of what remains of the Russian Federation, which is still the biggest country in the world, stretches across two continents and is stuffed with nuclear arsenals. This is why the French spokesman Fabius declared that
"France supports the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and condemns terrorism, operations of destabilisation and fundamentalism, which are threats to democracy" (Le Monde 7.10.99).
The present threat of the disintegration of Russia is a consequence of the collapse of the USSR. It represents a new step in the aggravation of world-wide chaos and the decomposition of capitalist society. It also points more clearly than before to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, which is a product of this decomposition and has manifested itself in numerous countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Turkey, etc; and, within the Russian Federation, through the Islamic troops of the Chechen Bassaev and of Khattab in Dagestan).
However, compared to their reaction at the beginning of the Russian he beginning of the Russian intervention, we have seen a harder tone coming from the western powers, an increasing pressure on Russia. But this has nothing to do with any concern about the fate of the local populations and everything to do with their sordid imperialist interests.
The big imperialist powers continue to aggravate barbarism and chaos
Through the war in Chechnya, Russia is also trying to recuperate its imperialist interests in the southern Caucasus, and it's here that it is coming up against the majority of the other big imperialist powers who have been trying to eject it from this eminently strategic region. If today certain European states like Germany and France are beginning to have 'disagreements' with Russia and to make gestures towards the Chechen leaders, it's solely in order to advance their own imperialist ambitions in this region.
The big powers are, as a matter of fact, being confronted with their own contradictions. They all have an interest in preventing a new explosion of what's left of Russia, in stopping it from sliding into uncontrollable chaos. But at the same time they have an interest in drawing the maximum profit from the weakening of Russia and in limiting its imperialist influence in this zone. This is notably the case wit. This is notably the case with the USA. The director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Kazakhstan has declared that
"The USA is trying to exploit the myth of vast oil reserves around the Caspian sea in order to eliminate Russian influence from central Asia and the Caucasus" (Financial Times, 10.11.99).
As for France, it's fear of being left out of the game and its need to find a foothold in the Caucasus has led it to more and more espouse the "Chechen cause", complete with increased TV coverage about the effects of war on the Chechen population.
Today, more than ever, the control of this strategic region made up of the Caucasian countries of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea has become a crucial prize. The USA and its oil companies have a controlling hand on all the big energy extraction projects from central Asia to Turkey and including the southern Caucasus. Whether we're talking about the export of gas from Turkmenistan or the oil pipelines, the policy of the US is to create for itself the widest possible network, incorporating a number of points of access. One of the two main oil pipelines is the one that links the oil of the Caspian to the Turkish terminal at Ceyhan.
The other, which was only completed in May 1999, goes through the Georgian port of Soupsa. The USA's main aim is to undermine rival Russian projects. To carry though this enterprise, the other main beneficiary of which will be Turkey (and behind Turkey, Germany), the USA has also supervised the settlement of the conflict in High Karabakh, a zone situated close to the pipeline. This has resulted in a reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, involving concessions towards Armenian claims on this territory, which was the object of a very bloody war between 1992 and 94. This agreement will also make it possible to detach Armenia from its alliance with the Kremlin.
As for Russia, for whom the Caspian oil reserves remain of vital economic importance, its two ways of access have been blocked. The first, which went right through the middle of Chechnya, was ruined last year by mysterious acts of sabotage. Russia then built a new section going round Chechnya and through Dagestan, leading to the Russian port of Novosiisk on the Black Sea. The incursion of Chechen rebels into Dagestan in August cut off this route.
Just as it launched its offensive in Chechnya, Russia also increased its threats towards the independent countries of the southern Caucasus. Azerbaijan, which hascasus. Azerbaijan, which has close links with Turkey, has for months been accused by Moscow of backing the Chechen and Dagestan terrorists. Since 1991 Russia has also been supporting the Abkhari and Ossetian separatists in Shevardnaze's Georgia. Gorbachev's ex-foreign minister Shevardnaze has himself escaped several assassination attempts carried out on Moscow's orders, notably in February 1998. Georgia has borders with Chechnya, and has a potential ally in Turkey.
Above all, pressure has been stepped up on Armenia, which has been accused of treason. At the very moment when an agreement on oil was signed under US tutelage between the three Caucasian states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, the Armenian prime minister and six other political figures, including the parliament's chairman, were assassinated in a full session of the national assembly by a commando group which was probably acting on behalf of the Kremlin. Finally, Russia has found another way of exerting pressure on Georgia. Despite the difficulties of passing its mountainous frontiers, Georgia is the only port in the storm for Chechen refugees who have found that neighbouring Ingusetia is already saturated.
It could therefore also be a haven for Chechen rebels. Russia could easily use this as a pretext for threatening military interven threatening military intervention against Georgia. This has upped the stakes of the whole situation. Far from backing off, the Americans have rushed to confirm the oil agreement between the Caucasian states, Kazakhstan and Turkey, an agreement which clearly excludes Russia from the region, and which was publicly ratified at the OSCE summit. There are other definite signs of a sharpening of tensions. Under US pressure, the head of the IMF, the Frenchman Camdessus, who symbolised the policy of generosity towards Russia even after the scandal of the misappropriation of IMF funds by the Yeltsin clan, suddenly announced his intention to retire.
Parallel to this, the Pope's visit to Georgia was very coldly received by the orthodox church which is under Russian tutelage (a communiqué from the patriarch of Tbilisi forbade its faithful from taking part in a mass presided over by Jean-Paul).
Today, the whole Caucasus region is threatened by a conflagration involving rival imperialist powers. But the future of Russia itself is also directly linked to this. Russia is caught in a real dilemma:
CB 19.11.99
A century ago we heard much the same message. In 1898 Ivan Bloch published The War of the Future in St Petersburg. He said that war was bound to become obsolete, as it was too costly, too murderous and so complicated that it was impossible to win. However, such views did not stand uncorrected. In 1901, in exile in Siberia, the revolutionary Leon Trotsky had a more accurate view of what capitalism was, and what it had in store.
"Hatred and murder, famine and blood... It seems as if the new century, this gigantic newcomer, were bent at thetic newcomer, were bent at the very moment of its appearance to drive the optimist into absolute pessimism [...]
- Death to Utopia! Death to faith! Death to love! Death to hope! thunders the twentieth century in salvoes of fire and in the rumbling of guns." (from an article on 'Optimism and pessimism', cited in Deutscher's The prophet armed)
Trotsky was right. Starting with war in South Africa and finishing with the bombardments of Iraq, Serbia and Chechnya, by any standard the twentieth century has been the most disastrous in history. Its imagery is dominated by the gulag and the concentration camp, by warfare from the trenches to the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.
In fact, war has become the very means of survival for capitalist states in the twentieth century, despite the fact that it is so costly, murderous and so often results in military stalemates. The First World War, the 'war to end all wars' was seen as an unparalleled catastrophe with the death of 20 million. Yet twenty years later more than 60 million died in the Second World War, 1 in 40 of the world's population were victims of the bourgeoisie's massacre. As for the times of 'peace' tens of millions more have been sacrificed by capitalism in its imperialist conflicts. Just to take the period of the Just to take the period of the 'Cold War' one calculation has given a figure of some 160 armed conflicts throughout the world between 1945 and 89. Korea, Nigeria, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Iran/Iraq head the long list that condemns the capitalist system. The period since the end of the Cold War has been even more rife with genocide and butchery: Iraq, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the Congo, Algeria, East Timor...
The decadence of capitalism
While capitalism in its period of expansion was always marked by its brutality, its characteristics since the First World War are those of a mode of production in its period of decadence - a decadence much more calamitous than that of previous systems. As we wrote in the ICC Manifesto of 1975:
"In the past, humanity has known periods of decadence in which there were many calamities and unspeakable suffering. But these were nothing compared to what humanity has suffered these past sixty years. The decadence of other societies was the development of shortages and famines but in a totally different context than today, when so much human misery exists alongside such enormous squandering of wealth. At a time when man has made himself the master of marvellous technologies that make it possible for him to subdue nature, he remains subject tdue nature, he remains subject to its whims. In today's conditions 'natural' climatic or agricultural catastrophes are even more tragic than they were in the past. Worse still, capitalist society is the first society in history whose very survival in the period of decline depends upon a massive cyclical destruction of an ever growing part of itself. To be sure, other periods of decadence saw confrontations between factions of the dominant class, but the period of decadence in which we are living today is locked in an unabating and devilish cycle of crisis - world war - reconstruction - crisis; making the human race pay a terrible tribute in death and suffering."
The continuation of capitalism is a disaster for humanity. And the most tragic thing about this is that all the horrors of the 20th century, the wars, the death camps, the obliteration of culture, are all the direct result of the defeat of the first attempt by the international working class to do away with this system and replace it with a higher form of production.
The first revolutionary wave and its defeat
The First World War did not come to an end because of a clear victory for one of the protagonists. It was the struggle of the working class that put an end to the conflict. This was not just in Russia, where the Keret just in Russia, where the Kerensky regime had been overthrown, not just in Germany where the bourgeoisie called for an armistice as an insurrectionary movement reached Berlin, but as part of a growing international wave of workers' struggles.
"At the highest point of its struggle between 1917 and 1923, the proletariat took power in Russia, engaged in mass insurrections in Germany, and shook Italy, Hungary, and Austria to their foundations. Although less strongly, the revolutionary wave also manifested itself in bitter struggles in, for example, Spain, Great Britain, North and South America. The tragic failure of the revolutionary wave was finally marked in 1927 by the crushing of the proletarian insurrection in Shanghai and Canton in China after a long series of defeats for the working class internationally" (ICC Platform).
On the political level, this movement found its highest expression in the foundation of the Communist international in 1919.
The repression of the bourgeoisie took many forms, from the invasion of Russia by the armies of the Entente, to the butchery of the Freikorps unleashed by German Social Democracy. The working class had long been in a position to appreciate the counter-attack that the ruling class would mount when it was threatened - most cnt when it was threatened - most clearly from the repression of the Paris Commune some fifty years previously. What was new in the 20s and 30s was that the working class was also subjected to the counter-revolutionary actions of those who called themselves 'socialists' or even 'communists'.
To take a typical example: in Italy the militancy of the working class was wasted in massive factory occupations which diverted the movement from frontally attacking the capitalist state. In 1924 Trotsky wrote that:
"In Italy there was a sabotaged revolution. The proletariat hurled itself with all its weight against the bourgeoisie, seizing factories, mines, and mills, but the Socialist Party, frightened by the proletariat's pressure on the bourgeoisie, stabbed it in the back, disorganised it, paralysed its efforts, and handed it over to fascism" ('On the Road to European Revolution').
In a sense this was the experience of the whole working class. The revolutionary wave had been met with force of arms, but it had also been sabotaged by the unions and Social Democracy. The coming to power of Hitler in 1933 was the final demonstration of the defeat of the working class. The balance of forces had changed and the path was open to war. The Communist International had become an instrument of the Russiacome an instrument of the Russian state, and the acceptance of Russia into the League of Nations in 1934 was further confirmation of the defeat of the working class and the international preparations for war.
Communism remains humanity's only hope
The counter-revolution that descended on the working class in the 20s could not last forever. At the end of the 1960s the proletarian giant began to awaken from its long sleep. In 1968-74 there was an international wave of struggles which swept through France, Italy, Spain, Britain and many other countries, exposing the lie that the working class had disappeared or been bought off by the system. From 1978-81 there was a second wave that had its highest expression with the mass strike in Poland. From 1983-89 there was a movement with a greater extent than any in the history of the working class. These movements also gave new life to the political expressions of the working class, the communist minorities which had been so decimated by the years of counter-revolution.
But despite the intensity of struggles from 1968-89, the working class did not go on the offensive against the capitalist system. At the same time, despite the economic crisis demanding that capitalism should come up with the 'solution' of world war, it has not been able to do so. Th not been able to do so. The bourgeoisie has not been able to mobilise the workers of the main capitalist countries behind the ideology of national defence. There has been a social stalemate which led to the disintegration of the blocs set up to wage a third world war. Decadent capitalism entered a new and final phase - the phase of decomposition, of an accelerating slide into barbarism and chaos. While the course toward world war is not open, the worsening of decomposition leads humanity towards the same fate.
"In the end, it is all the same whether we are wiped out in a rain of thermonuclear bombs, or by pollution, epidemics and the massacres of small wars (where nuclear weapons might also be used). The only difference between these two forms of annihilation lies in that one is quick, while the other will be slower, and would consequently provoke still more suffering" ('Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism', in the ICC pamphlet The decadence of capitalism).
We have not yet reached the point of no return; but capitalism certainly doesn't have a whole millennium in front of it, and it's far more probable that the fate of humanity will be decided well inside the 21st century. The decomposition of society bears with it the growing threat of the destruction of all social the destruction of all social ties, the liquidation of rational thought, the irreparable poisoning of the natural environment, the devastation of war. And yet the fact remains that capitalism itself has created the technical, material means to put an end to poverty and hunger, to the drudgery of wage labour and the waste of unemployment, to the irrational divisions and competition that lead to war. It is only the perpetuation of capitalist social relations which prevent this vast productive potential being placed in the service of humanity. And the fact also remains that capitalism's gravedigger - the international class of wage labourers, the proletariat - has neither disappeared nor been finally defeated. Here lies the only hope for humanity's survival, and for the emergence of a truly human society. The proletarians must reject with contempt the phony optimism of the bourgeoisie's millennium celebrations - a fraud which barely masks the nihilism of a class which has been condemned by history. It is we, the exploited, the communist class, which holds the key to the coming century and the coming millennium.
WR
In the last issue of World Revolution we reported that one of the participants at our public forum on anarchism and the war in Spain in the 1930s had given out a pamphlet called When Insurrections Die by Gilles Dauve (1). A brief preface by Antagonism Press informs us that "this is a shorter, entirely reconceived version of the preface to the selection of articles on Spain 1936-39 from the Italian left magazine Bilan, published in French under the pen-name Jean Barrot and now out of print".
We want to make some comments on this text because while it contains many of the analyses and class positions elaborated by the communist left, its primary effect is to provide a theoretical justification for some of the most basic confusions surrounding the methods and goals of the communist revolution - confusions which are only too rife in the milieu which we refer to as the swamp, the ever-shifting zone of transition between bourgeois and proletarian politics.
This is by no means the first time that we have encountered Barrot's work. There is no doubt that he has been influenced by the communist left and as well as the Bilan collection has also published a book on the German left which we reviewed when it was published in the 1970s (2). This influence can still be seen in the text When Insurrections Die. But Barrot's political specificity is that he is a key figure in the development of what we have termed the ‘modernist' current.
This current, though having much older roots (3), made its real debut on the margins of the revolutionary milieu in the mid-70s; it was in essence a product of the reflux of the first international wave of workers' struggles launched by the general strike in France in May 1968. It reappeared again in another period of reflux in the early 80s, following the defeat of the mass strike movement in Poland (4). Today, with the ‘collapse of communism' and its attendant campaigns, the working class faces even greater difficulties, even doubts about its own existence as a class; it is therefore not surprising to find modernist ideas again gaining currency. In Britain, the Aufheben group, for example, borrows many of modernism's presuppositions. This is because the foremost characteristic of modernism is to put in question the revolutionary nature of the working class. In itself this is not unique - indeed a kind of ‘modernism' or ‘post-modernism' has become a dominant feature of bourgeois ideology in general today. But the modernists we are referring to also claim to be communists.
The trajectory of Jacques Camatte and the review Invariance provide the clearest illustration of modernism's underlying approach. Camatte broke from the Bordigist PCI in the 60s, having discovered that Bordigism was not the only expression of the historical communist left. But very rapidly Camatte developed profound doubts in the revolutionary potential of the working class, increasingly defining it as no more than a cog in the capitalist system. This was accompanied by a growing rejection of marxism and of revolutionary political organisations, which he characterised as ‘rackets'. Camatte's hopes turned to the eruption of a ‘universal human class' against capital; but very soon these hopes also faded and he took the logical step of retreating to a survivalist commune in the French mountains.
This ‘modern' attempt to find a revolutionary road that has ‘gone beyond' marxism and the working class thus revealed itself as a new packaging of classically anarchist themes. When Marx criticised Bakunin in the 1860s, he demonstrated that such themes were already reactionary, that the workers' movement had left them behind. It had replaced the notion of a ‘grand social liquidation' of all the oppressed by the idea of a working class struggle for political power; it had replaced organisational methods based on affinity groups, sects, or freebooting individuals with the principle of coherent political organisations of the communist vanguard. Modernism, like classical anarchism, was essentially the ideology of petty bourgeois thinkers who considered that the working class was not revolutionary enough for them and who as a result could only slip back into the conceptions of the past.
Barrot has never reached the extreme conclusions of Camatte, but from the 1970s onwards he has continued to disseminate all the underlying conceptions of modernism: its doubts about the working class; its characterisation of politics as a sphere of alienation; its rejection of militant political organisation and of the necessity for the working class to establish its political domination before it can create a communist society. When Insurrections Die shows that Barrot has not revised these views.
Barrot's text is presented, as we have seen, as an "entirely reconceived" version of the introduction to the Bilan collection on Spain. Indeed it is so much revised that there is hardly any mention of Bilan in it at all. Instead, Barrot's historical references are to the positions of the Dutch communist left. This is probably no accident, since although the majority of the Dutch council communists certainly did defend revolutionary positions on the war in Spain, it was the Italian left who insisted on applying to the situation certain marxist basics which must make any self-respecting modernist feel rather uncomfortable: concepts such as the decadence of capitalism, the necessity for the class party and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Add to this the text's argument that "marxism", no less than anarchism, "fetishises" the state (see p 32-33), and we can conclude that the Barrot of the ‘90s has moved farther away from marxism from the Barrot of the ‘70s, who could still write that, "The future revolution will not be a question of banal repetition; but it will take up the historic thread of the international communist left" (from The communist left in Germany, 1918-21, cited in International Review 11). Nevertheless, the text still contains many nuggets of clarity inherited from the communist left:
- in its denunciation of the fraud of anti-fascism and the Trotskyist ideology of the United Front. According to the latter, the working class could have stopped the rise of fascism in the 20s and 30s ‘if only' it had forced the different left wing parties to unite. Instead Barrot's text reaffirms that it was precisely the left factions of capital in Germany and Italy who prepared the way for fascism;
- vis-a-vis the war in Spain, the text reiterates the view defended by Bilan and other left communist fractions at the time: the proletariat had indeed defended itself from the fascist attack when it fought on its own class terrain in July 1936; but it then opened itself up to the massacre by allowing itself to be pulled onto the bourgeois terrain of defending democracy. The text also uncovers the crucial role played by the semi-Trotskyists of the POUM and the anarchists of the CNT in diverting the working class from an all-out attack on the capitalist state and in subjugating it to the authority of the bourgeoisie, above all through the medium of the ‘anti-fascist militias' and the ‘collectivisations'. Finally, it demonstrates that when the Spanish workers made one last attempt to regroup behind their own class barricades, the POUM and the CNT were again on hand to sabotage this resistance from the inside.
The basic problem with the text is that having chased anarchism out of the front door, Barrot's modernist conceptions allow it in again through the back window. Barrot agrees with marxism that the bourgeois state has to be smashed in any real revolutionary uprising. But he is explicitly opposed to the marxist conception that the proletariat must then consolidate its own political domination if it is to take social and economic life in a communist direction. For him, this is just a formula for erecting a new power above the proletariat. What is needed instead is an immediate ‘communisation' of social relations:
"There is no revolution without the destruction of the state. But how? Beating off armed bands, getting rid of state structures and habits, setting up new modes of debate and decision - all these tasks are impossible if they do not go hand in hand with communisation. We don't want ‘power': we want the power to change all of life... If the revolution is supposed to be political first and social later, it would create an apparat whose sole function would be the struggle against the supporters of the old world, i.e. a negative function of repression, a system of control resting on no other content than its ‘programme' and its will to realise communism the day that conditions finally allow for it. This is how a revolution ideologises itself and legitimises the birth of a specialised stratum to oversee the maturation and the expectation of the ever-radiant day after tomorrow. The very stuff of politics is not being able , and not wanting, to change anything; it brings together what is separated without going any further..."(When Insurrections Die, p 38).
All this is highly ambiguous. It is perfectly true that the proletarian revolution can only triumph if it is based on the permanent self-activity of the proletarian masses in all areas of life, and that from the start this self-activity must tend in a communist direction. But to deny the primacy of politics in the first, decisive stages of the revolution is to spread the illusion that a new communist mode of life can appear from day one in any given corner - as implied by Barrot when he says that:
"communist measures (in Spain) could have undermined the social bases of the two states (republican and nationalist), if only by solving the agrarian question... A subversive force erupted, bringing to the fore the most oppressed strata, those farthest from political life (e.g. women), but it could not go all the way and eradicate the system root and branch" (p 35).
Here Barrot seems to ignore the fact that the Spanish events took place in a period of profound defeat for the working class internationally; but as the experience of the Russian revolution shows, even in a globally revolutionary period, very little can change in the sphere of social and economic relations until the working class has taken political power on a world scale. Even when many of the outward forms of value production are done away with (e.g. the virtual suppression of money during the ‘war communism' period in Russia), the content of a social relations based on scarcity will constantly re-impose itself. Communism is not the communisation of poverty in one country but a world-wide society of abundance that has dug out the roots of competition and exchange.
In conflating the social and political dimensions of the revolutionary process, and above all by equating proletarian political power with the automatic emergence of an ‘apparat', a ‘specialised stratum', the ‘modern' Barrot has only given a new theoretical gloss to Bakunin's rejection of ‘authoritarian marxism'. Small wonder that his writings should appear so attractive to those who are weary of the clichés of traditional anarchism but who cling desperately to its innermost convictions.
Amos, (6/12/99).
1) The pamphlet is being given away free; the reason being, as its distributor said at the forum , that "I am a communist". Presumably this means that communist literature should not be sold. For us this approach is not communist at all; it is a further expression of anarchist moralism and individualism. A communist organisation - as opposed to loose associations of individuals who publish things from time to time - which refused on principle to sell its press would be unable to maintain its existence for very long.
2) See International Review 11 ‘The Communist left in Germany 1918-21: a review'
3) For a study of the historical roots of modernism, see ‘Modernism: from leftism to the void' in World Revolution 3. This article, however, has an important weakness in that it presents modernism more or less as a direct emanation of the counter-revolution. Today we would define it as an expression of the swamp, though it may have strong leftist and parasitic elements within it.
4) See ‘Doubts about the working class' in International Review 34. At the time this text was written (1983), Barrot was producing La Banquise, (The Ice Barrier), which was based on an extreme pessimism about the possibilities of the class struggle. Prior to this he animated a group called Mouvement Communiste (not to be confused with the parasitic group of the same name today). Today he seems to work on a purely individual basis.
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[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/council-communism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/german-and-dutch-left
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/collapse-balkans
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[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/balkans
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[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/leftism
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[24] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/france
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[30] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/13/marxism-theory-revolution
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[43] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/34/communism
[44] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/modernism
[45] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/jean-barrot
[46] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/gilles-dauve