Even before the world leaders sit down at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, it has been widely predicted that it will come out with nothing concrete, nothing binding, nothing effective in the face of a perspective of planet-wide ecological catastrophe; that the best that can be hoped for is another conference in 2010. The following article explains why we cannot expect any real solutions from those whose first concern is to maintain the present social system.
First there is global warming:
- Levels of the two of the most important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, have reached their highest point for 650,000 years. This means that the average temperature on earth will increase by between 1.1 and 6.4% over the next 100 years;
- Rising sea levels could lead to the disappearance of entire islands and even countries like Bangladesh. This would result in the forced displacement of hundreds of millions of people;
- We are seeing increasingly violent storms, such as hurricane Katrina. Some experts think that this risk has gone up threefold in the last ten years;
- Deserts are spreading. Right now there is a terrible drought in seven countries in east Africa, including Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. 23 million human beings are under threat because of repeated bad harvests and there are no food reserves. This drought is also hitting Australia and the American southwest, and in the past few years disastrous wildfires have also menaced whole cities and regions. In central Asia, the Aral Sea in Russia has practically vanished.
Then there is the manufacture of poisonous products, and toxic wastes being spread everywhere, in the air, the waters and the earth. Everyone immediately thinks about nuclear energy, about Chernobyl and all the radioactive waste. But there are also products like mercury which pollute a number of waterways or coastal waters. There is asbestos which is present in buildings in all countries. There are also the pesticides, used for the needs of intensive agriculture. These poisons are largely behind the decline in the bee population, for example. The production of these pesticides brings to mind the factory in Bhopal, in India, where an explosion resulting from inadequate investment in safety measures killed nearly 30,000 people and contaminated large parts of a city of 800,000!
And what can we say about the way the huge mountain of waste is managed? Here the governments and the companies of the world show their total irresponsibility. Once again nuclear waste is in the forefront. France has sent its nuclear waste to Siberia in simple metal barrels and deposited them in the open air! The documentary by Yann-Arthus Bertrand, Vu du ciel, revealed how China is dumping its nuclear waste into the lakes of the high plateaux of Tibet, one of the essential lungs of the planet, and is thus putting billions at risk! In Italy, particularly in Naples, garbage of all kind is accumulating in huge dumps and there is an explosion of disease among local residents. The French state has recently got rid of a boatload of toxic waste in a suburb if Abidjan on the Ivory Coast. There were deaths and thousands of people were contaminated. In June 1992, the Food and Agricultural Organisation already announced that developing countries, especially in Africa, had become a ‘dustbin' in the service of the west. The oceans are also being used as a dustbin. La Repubblica online of 29 January 2007 described an island of a new kind, something straight out of a horror movie by Tim Burton: a "garbage island", situated "in the Pacific Ocean, thirty metres deep, and 80% composed of plastic and the rest by other waste products from all over the place. This ‘island' weighs 3.5 million tons"!
Finally, to terminate what could be interminable, we also have to underline the incessant pillaging of resources. The equatorial band around the planet is being laid waste by the deforestation of Amazonia, equatorial Africa and Indonesia...much of this, irony of ironies, to produce bio-fuels. And while the oceans represent 60% of our food resources, they are being stripped bare: thousands of species are on the verge of extinction. A large part of humanity is thus faced with famine. In short, the destruction wrought by capitalism is now threatening the very survival of humanity.
Faced with catastrophe on such a scale, the bourgeoisie is now ringing the alarm bells. An "unprecedented coalition" of French organisations for the defence of the environment and human rights has posed a "climatic" ultimatum to the states attending the Copenhagen conference.
Either these countries sign an agreement which will lead world greenhouse gas emissions to stabilise then decline before 2015.
Or our planet will heat up beyond 2° centigrade, the threshold beyond which the consequences for humanity and the planet will be disastrous. According to the same coalition, the world's climate could even pass a point of no return and become completely uncontrollable.
The Nicolas Hulot foundation made a very similar appeal: "the future of the planet, and with it, the fate of a billion hungry people who have no spokesman, is being played out at Copenhagen. Choose solidarity, or slide into chaos. Humanity is at the crossroads".
It's true: humanity is at the crossroads, but certainly not at Copenhagen. We are in a sinking ship and we need to abandon it, which means that we have to understand how capitalism functions.
It is the very laws of capitalism that are pushing the bourgeoisie to destroy the planet. We live under a monstrous system which turns everything it produces, including waste itself, into a commodity, not to satisfy human need but to make a profit. This can reach absurd levels, such as the invention of recent summits: the legal possibility of buying ‘the right to pollute'. Capitalism is above all the law of the strongest and the reign of competition. In response to this law we have seen the rise of huge industrial concentrations and of mega-cities which crowd millions of human beings together: Tokyo - 36 million; Mumbai - 26 million; Mexico City and New York - 21 million each; Kinshasa - 17 million....and obviously these concentrations play a major role in the ecological crisis. Competition also means war. The production and upkeep of military material (not counting the millions of people who fall victim to wars) is a vast abyss of human and natural energy. An aircraft carrier consumes several thousand litres of fuel in an hour, for example. Finally, capitalism is a totally anarchic and irrational method of production. A commodity can travel thousands of miles to find a buyer. Countries may be selling food products to the other end of the planet, while the local population is dying of hunger because they don't have the means to pay for food!
Contrary to all the propaganda which puts the blame for all this on the individual ‘citizen', making us feel guilty by arguing that if the planet is doing badly, it's because we take the car to work, or we let the tap run when we are brushing our teeth, or we don't recycle properly, it's the capitalist system of production as a whole which is responsible for the grave ecological imbalance which, if it persists for too long, could eliminate humanity altogether.
Now, a certain number of celebrities like Al Gore and Nicolas Hulot, as well as pointing to a genuinely terrifying reality, also call on us to push the great and the powerful to coordinate internationally and find the solutions. Obviously any solution to the ecological problem has to be found on an international scale. A child can see that. But these appeals to the world leaders are a way of hiding reality. The world leaders they call on to take the necessary measures are quite simply the representatives of the national bourgeoisies and a mere glance at the decisions they have been taking for over a century demonstrates that we can expect nothing from them.
These bourgeoisies have produced war after war. Since 1939 not a day has passed without a murderous conflict somewhere on the planet. And it is when they are at war that they reveal most clearly their utter cynicism towards nature and towards human beings: poison gas, chemical weapons such as defoliants, bacteriological warfare, atomic bombs and most recently phosphorus bombs. The recent wars in the Gulf, in Palestine, in Afghanistan, to give only a few examples, have shown just how effective they are in destroying human lives and the environment.
As for the decisions that will be taken or have been taken already, it's not hard to see their ridiculous side. We've mentioned the idea of buying the ‘right to pollute', but there's also the carbon tax, car-free days, etc. And we have already seen the future of ‘green energy' such as bio-fuels under capitalism. Over the last two years, no less than 30 countries have been hit by hunger riots because a large part of their agricultural produce has been diverted towards the development of bio-fuels, and speculation over these products led to rapid price rises. Renewable energy or more long-lasting forms of energy production are used mainly by states and companies (often the biggest polluters of the lot, like Total or BP) to show us that another kind of capitalism, a green capitalism, will enable us not only to save the planet but find a way out of the economic crisis. In reality, the ecological catastrophe, like unemployment, war and all the other horrors engendered by capitalism, prove only that this system is bankrupt and has led humanity into a complete impasse.
Only one class can overturn this suicidal society and offer a different future to humanity: the working class. The working class exists and struggles on an international scale, and it has already proved this by its attempts at world revolution in 1917-19, which put an end to the butchery of the First World War. And today we can still see that the workers the world over are waging the same struggle, whether in Rio, New York or Cairo. Everywhere its basic demands are the same: decent living conditions for all.
The motor, the dynamic of these struggles is the opposite of the law of profit and competition: it is the solidarity of a class which is associated by nature. The mutual aid, the cooperation, the fraternity which develop through the workers' struggle lays the ground for a society freed from all exploitation.
Some will object that the experience of Russia has only brought us Stalinism and its corollary, productivism. We can't go into any detail here about the enormous lie that is Stalinism=communism. But let's just look at the question of productivism. Stalinism had respect neither for nature nor for human life. But this was very different for the revolutionaries of 1917. In fact ‘ecology' was already part of their struggle. At the beginning of the 1920s, there was a commissariat of the environment animated by Bolsheviks like Lunacharsky, Bogdanov, Borodin and others. By the end of the 20s this commissariat had managed to establish 60 Zapovedniki, protected spaces for the preservation of all species. But Stalinism rapidly destroyed such initiatives in the interest of a frenzied capitalist productivism, whether in industry or the countryside. One of the results of Stalinism's management of the environment has been the disappearance of the Aral Sea. In the USSR overall, over 20% of the land has been completely laid waste.
The working class, through its international revolution, is alone capable of opening the perspective of a radical transformation of the relationship between man and nature. This is why the most conscious minorities should not be limited to a purely ecological combat, but should direct their energies towards reinforcing the struggle of the working class.
Ayato 14/11/9
Following the suspension of strike action by the Communication Workers Union, many will cry ‘sell-out' and ‘betrayal' by the union bureaucrats. This article argues that both the methods it used while the struggle was on, and the decision to call a halt to the action, were examples of the union doing its job: sabotaging the class struggle from the inside.
In early November, the Communications Workers Union reached an ‘Interim Agreement' with Royal Mail management. This agreement brokered by Acas and the TUC effectively called off the national postal strikes as they were about to enter a third week. In reaction to a massive campaign of calumny against the postal workers' struggle this agreement was heralded as providing ‘a period of calm' and ‘a strike-free Christmas'. This agreement did not specifically rule out strikes during the period leading up to Christmas period, but provided for local ‘reviews'. As it happens there have been no reviews organised at the local level by the CWU.
It was clear to many postal workers that the Interim Agreement was just a manoeuvre that would undermine the struggle in defence of jobs and conditions. This was very clearly revealed by Dave Ward and the CWU's Postal Executive Committee in the covering letter sent out with copies of the agreement. "We should tell our members that it was right to suspend strike action. We have always promised our members that we would not take unnecessary strike action" This is really rich! At a time when postal workers are fighting massive attacks the union thinks that strike action could be deemed ‘unnecessary'! This has been seen by many postal workers as a ‘sell-out' by the union tops of the CWU. In reality this is not an accidental ‘mistake ‘ on the part of the CWU, or the application of incorrect tactics, but is a continuation of its previous sabotage and isolation of the postal workers' struggle. Above all the CWU wanted to take control of the movement. The CWU, along with the rest of the British bourgeoisie, did not want the inspiring example of a sector of workers, with a reputation for militancy in recent years, fighting against job cuts and worsening conditions and prompting other workers to struggle.
Eighteen months ago postal workers in many offices reacted to local negotiations which were attempting to implement phase 4 of the 2007 Pay and Modernisation agreement. Across the country, but particularly in the London area, workers in local offices fought against attacks by Royal Mail management trying to impose job losses by so-called ‘executive action'. The calling of the national strikes was supposed to end the isolation of local offices by confronting RM management with a national work force.
In section 4 of the Interim Agreement it says "Royal Mail and CWU have reached agreement to accelerate and complete the modernisation programme by jointly resolving all outstanding issues from phase 4 of Pay and Modernisation Agreement 2007".
This modernisation programme agreed to by the union means a massive clear-out of staff. This is the issue which is at the heart of the postal workers' struggle. The programme is not accepted by the majority of postal workers but is being implemented by Royal Mail even during the so-called ‘cooling-off' period. Although postal workers were signed up to the Agreement by the CWU there were several local walk-outs. The national strike was intended to end local initiatives.
In 2007 the strike was defeated by the use of the union tactic of the ‘rolling strike' which, as we said in WR 328, saw "the wearing down of the movement through partial action limited in time and geographical extension". However, during the strikes we saw very important expressions of solidarity, with refusals to cross picket lines and the blacking of mail. The latter was particularly important in Scotland where the suspension of drivers refusing to work blacked mail helped spread the strikes. Even though these strikes did not move out of the framework of the unions, or spread beyond postal workers, they marked a significant extension of the movement, because they were for the most part unofficial and at first out of the control of the union. We also saw the holding of mass meetings. What was decisive was the fact that the struggle didn't spread to other sectors of the working class. This strengthened the position of the CWU and re-enforced the union stranglehold.
In the 2009 strikes we saw postal workers isolated at first at the local level, with some workers being involved in one-day strikes over a period of 15 weeks. Many workers lost thousands of pounds in lost wages trying to defend themselves at a local level. The CWU then called the national rolling strikes, only to call them off three weeks later. All this has had a profoundly demoralising effect. Many workers faced with the attacks on their wages and conditions are considering getting out of Royal Mail before things get even worse. This is an individualist response but not unexpected when the CWU, with the indefinite postponement of the national strike, has reduced the struggle to a local level.
There is a profound cynicism amongst postal workers towards the CWU but not yet a dynamic to go beyond the framework of the unions.
Melmoth 4/12/9
The relentless deepening of the crisis and the vast burden of debt weighing on the British economy mean that the ruling class - whichever of its factions are in government in the coming year - will have no choice but to make savage cuts in working class living standards.
"The west's leading economic think tank today weighed into the political row over public expenditure in Britain when it called on the government to implement deep cuts in public spending once the recession is over. In its annual health check on the UK, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said the government could ‘do considerably more to accelerate its programme of fiscal consolidation', provided recovery was under way. The OECD said a better way to repair the massive hole in Britain's public finances - estimated to be 14% of GDP by 2010 - would be to cut spending rather than raise taxes. This follows on from comments made by Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, who last week demanded tougher goals from the chancellor, Alistair Darling, to reduce an ‘extraordinary' public deficit" (Guardian 29/6/9).
The government is under pressure not just from the point of view of its own fiscal situation, but also from international bodies concerned at the growing hole in Britain's public sector finances which, in September, stood at a staggering £804.8 billion. "The Institute for Fiscal Studies is predicting the biggest squeeze in spending on public services since the late 1970s when the Labour government was forced to go to the IMF for a bail-out. Both Labour and the Tories have said they want to more than halve the budget deficit by 2013/14. Leaked Treasury documents include plans to cut spending across departments by a total of 9.3% over four years from 2010"(bbc 20/9/09).
Fortunately for the British ruling class, regardless of whoever wins the forthcoming General Election, all three main political parties agree completely on the need to make sweeping cuts across the public sector. This in turn, concretely, will mean pay and recruitment freezes (as well as actual cuts), increasing workloads, more stress for the vast majority of us.
The news in September, that government-appointed management consultants had recommended cutting the NHS workforce by 10% over the next 5 years, was met by immediate ‘rejection' from the Health Minister. "As well as the staff cuts, the consultants said a recruitment freeze should start within two years and medical school places might have to be reduced." (bbc 3/9/09).The government's response was that ‘core front-line staff' such as doctors and nurses would be maintained and that current levels of spending would be maintained until 2011.
However, between 1997 and 2008 the largest increase in staffing has been in administrative functions, from approximately 350,000 in 1997 to a huge 520,000 by 2008. It is here that the bulk of staff are likely to lose their jobs. Indeed, even though the report was ‘rejected' there is an expectation and demand that, for workers in the NHS "There is no room for complacency in the NHS. We must constantly look for new ways to be efficient and to deliver better patient care"(Karen Jennings, head of Health at UNISON, ibid). This is a view shared by all three parties and all three want the main focus to be on ‘efficiency' and ‘fighting bureaucracy' in the coming period. This sounds ominous indeed for thousands of administrative workers whose jobs could be cut under the pretext of reducing bureaucracy.
"More than 1,000 unemployed young people have marched through central London demanding jobs as the rate of youth unemployment stands at a record high. Students, union activists and campaigners condemned the government for ‘failing our futures'"(bbc 28/11/09).
"Apprenticeship and college budgets face public spending cuts, as the government publishes its skills strategy. Ministers have argued boosting skills is critical to the recovery of the UK economy, but are reducing spending by £433m next year" (bbc 17/9/09).
Over the 12 years of the Labour government there has been a slow decline in educational provision. Overall, the main cuts have been in the Further Education sector, especially in adult education, which has suffered repeated cuts nationally. The focus of government spending and targets has been in Primary and Secondary schools, especially in the area of ‘basic skills' - literacy and numeracy. However, this has done little to impact on youth unemployment which has reached record levels, and it is exactly young people who will bear the brunt of the current recession "The number of young people out of work has risen by 15,000, reaching a total of 943,000, the latest figures show. In the past year, job losses among young people have risen faster than within other sections of the working population. The rate of unemployment among young people for the three months to September is 18%, the highest since records began in this category in 1992" (bbc 11/9/09).
In this academic year there were 40,000 fewer places available to young people at universities, which adds to the funding crisis already being faced by UK universities. For those lucky enough to have got through university before the crisis hit, they are now facing the bleakest outlook in graduate employment for a generation, and should be consoled by the Labour offer of internships (i.e. work for nothing) or training (after 3 or 4 years at university) after 6 months of unemployment!
The Department of Work and Pensions, which includes all benefit payments, spent £135.7billion last year and the ruling class has been clear on the need to cut benefit payments. Under Labour there has been a gigantic increase in the number of people claiming disability benefit, although this had already started under the Tories in the middle and later part of the 1980s, largely as a means of pushing people off jobseekers' allowance and thereby keep official unemployment figures lower.
The Tories are proposing ‘bold plans' to radically shake this up "Within three years of being elected, the Tories want all 2.6 million people on incapacity benefit to be assessed to see what work they could do and offered training or other help in getting work. They expect about 500,000 claimants to be found jobs or transferred to jobseeker's allowance, which pays £25 a week less. Mr Cameron said: ‘If you can work, you should work... we will help you to work'" (bbc 5/10/09).
In addition, Labour's flagship ‘New Deal' back to work programme is to be scrapped by the Tories and replaced with more ‘personalised' help, which will include benefit cuts for those unwilling to take part in whatever spurious training they are made to undergo. On the other hand, Labour has said that "People out of work for more than six months who have turned down work experience, support or training will be required to take a work placement as a condition of receiving their benefits." It's not for nothing that the Work and Pensions Secretary, Yvette Cooper, noted (apparently without any sense of irony) that the Tories "are simply rehashing Labour policies..."
In the immediate future there is a bleak outlook for the working class in the UK and internationally. Everywhere workers turn there are proposed job cuts, for example: the closing of Corus in Redcar with the loss of 1700 jobs; 354 job losses announced at Vauxhall Luton; 340 jobs at a military aircraft maintenance base in South Wales; over 1200 job losses at British Airways; many tens of thousands of jobs lost as a direct result of this current crisis in the banking and finance sector - not to mention the many other thousands in hospitality, catering, travel and entertainment which heavily rely on corporate patronage, also lost.
However, this situation also contains the seeds of a class response. A simultaneity of attacks will mean the greater potential for a simultaneity of struggles. There will be an increasing likelihood that workers from different sectors under attack will start to go beyond ‘their' sector, beyond ‘their' union and aim to seek solidarity from other workers as a first step to pushing back the attacks.
Graham 29/11/09
After 8 years in Afghanistan, the international force led by the USA is sending in more troops. Far from a blow for democracy or the ‘war on terror', this conflict is turning the region into an ever worsening hell.
Eight years after the ‘great victory' that overthrew the Taliban in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the international NATO and Enduring Freedom forces are not only still there, but due to be increased by another 30,000 US and 500 British troops with another 10,000 requested from NATO. The 100,000 international (and 200,000 Afghan) soldiers and police have already lost over 1200 dead and countless injured and maimed. In addition there have been more than 2100 civilian deaths caught in the crossfire of the Taliban, Al Qaeda terrorism and western forces, with the latter responsible for 40% of these deaths according to UNO (such as the 90 killed near water tankers in Kunduz last September). And the risk of death, from bombardment, drones and terrorist bombings has been exported across the border into Pakistan. This spread of chaos, fear and death is the first great achievement of this military adventure, which like operations in the Middle East, Iraq, or ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s, are carried out for imperialist interests, however they may have been dressed up as ‘peace-keeping', ‘democracy' or the ‘war on terror' to disguise the build up of military tensions and sanitise the death and suffering visited on the population. To give an idea of western priorities, current US military spending is $100million a day, while international aid by all donors is $7 million a day, and half that promised has never materialised - with Robert Gate proposing that the US cut off this sort of aid to punish corruption. Similarly France spends 200 million Euro for the army and 11million on civilian aid. While the cost of the war to ‘save' the people of Afghanistan is $3.6billion a month, the population suffers. Drug barons drive about in 4x4s along with other dignitaries while only 5% of aid goes to supporting legitimate agriculture that is not only the livelihood of 70% of the population but also key to stemming the tide of drugs.
Meanwhile around 50,000 children work on the streets of Kabul, cleaning cars, shining shoes, collecting papers, and still suffer hunger, disease, violence and slavery. Conditions are worsening throughout the country. Afghanistan's maternal mortality is the second highest in the world, but in the North-East province of Badakhshan, a centre of opium traffic, it is significantly worse with 6,500 maternal deaths for every 100,000 births, the highest rate ever recorded. 75% of the newborn die from lack of food, warmth and care. Furthermore on average a pregnant woman has a one in 8 chance of dying, and half of them are under 16. This UN study showing just one aspect of the devastation of war and poverty on the population has not been publicised by the British media, which is sufficiently bare faced to imply that the war is necessary to improve the position of women. The election fiasco was well publicised, as is criticism of the corruption of Karzai and his regime by Gordon Brown, Obama, Clinton and others, but he is their man!
Despite the failure of the military intervention Obama has announced a troop surge, a second one after sending an extra 17,000 in February. He is claiming that "these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011", although NATO secretary general Rasmussen has assured us that the troops are there for as long as it takes, and the US is planning to send in a ‘high representative' to take over day to day control in Kabul. The new troops show that Obama is following exactly the same strategy as his predecessor George Bush, with the same justification: "we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear".
This is despite recent revelations that US forces had bin Laden ‘within their grasp' in 2001, but chose not to send the troops in to capture him and that Obama's national security advisor, James Jones, told Congress that Al Qaeda's presence is much reduced, with less than 100 operatives in the country, no base and no capacity to launch attacks against the ‘allies'. Even in Pakistan, the Wall Street Journal notes that Al Qaeda is pursued by US drones, short of money and having difficulty attracting young Arabs to fight in the bleak mountains of Pakistan. However, when Obama says that he will not tolerate a safe haven for terrorists, and that his policy must work for both sides of the border, this is clearly also a veiled threat against Pakistan.
So why such slaughter when the neither the threat of Al Qaeda nor the benefit to the population are in any way credible? Many of the ‘allies' are becoming more reluctant (Sarkozy has announced France will send no more troops, Germany is waiting till the New Year to decide) and even announcing the war is lost in advance. The Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, told CNN that Canada does not report the war since it was not fighting with the insurgents - a US complaint about many of the ‘allies'. Obama's announcement told us that the troop surge is in "the national interest". Precisely.
For the USA the national interest is the control of this strategic region close to China, Iran and Russia, essential trade routes for primary commodities and a region that looks across to Africa from Asia. It is, therefore, a major prize for the world's greatest power, its allies and its rivals, all of whom have complete contempt for the population. We can expect imperialist forces will be fighting over and devastating this region and massacring the population for a long time to come.
Wilma/Alex 5/12/09
We are publishing here four texts in response to the massive job-cuts facing power and electricity workers in Mexico. The first is a joint leaflet signed by our section in Mexico, which publishes Revolución mundial, and two internationalist anarchist groups, Grupo Socialista Libertario and the Projecto Anarquista Metropolitano. There are two messages of solidarity from proletarian groups in Peru. We are also publishing a further message in support of the workers' struggle, from comrades in Ecuador. These are all excellent examples of cooperation between proletarian organisations, who despite various differences can unite their forces in response to important events.
On the night of the 10th October the Federal police occupied all of the stations and centres of LyFC[1] in parallel with the presidential directive announcing the closing of this company and lay-offs for nearly 44,000 workers, which the government admits will be "more than that authorised by law". The attack provoked a state of shock, anger and impotence. This is a new blow by the state against the working class. Faced with this situation we have to ask how our class can respond and express its unity.
The generalised crisis hitting world capitalism forces each national bourgeoisie to push through increasingly brutal measures, diverting the worst effects of the crisis onto the proletariat. All of its ‘adjustments policies' are worsening the living conditions of all workers, by attacking pensions, wages, and social spending. This is the only way that the capitalists can keep their noses above water. Every country is ‘reforming pensions' (that is, lowering them!), increasing the amount of years that have to be worked before retirement; wages are being pulverised from every angle, the working day is becoming increasingly unbearable and unemployment is the final insult in a life of daily misery.
What we are seeing in Mexico is not some form of quaint folklore, caused by the particular errors of the national capital. The state, which represents the ruling class - the bourgeoisie - has the task of representing its interests (whether it is a government of the Right or the Left). The liquidation of LyFc is an old aim of the bourgeoisie, and if this has been delayed it is to give something back to the union apparatus: remember the support that the SME (Mexican electricians' union) gave to the candidature of Carlos Salinas (1988), the reward for which was the restructuring of the company.
The crisis, however, drags the bourgeoisie into a dead-end, where it cannot hide the catastrophic reality that it has brought about itself. It is therefore necessary for capital to reform its unions, and not destroy them as the left of capital claims. Workers are beginning to understand, deep down, that the unions' blackmail and grip on the struggle does not contribute to the realisation of their true aspirations. Despite all of their fine speeches the unions are the enemies of the proletariat, because the bourgeoisie needs them to better subdue the exploited.
Don't forget the huge campaign that has been unleashed in recent months against this sector of the proletarian class - the electricity workers - who have been made to look ‘privileged' and ‘inefficient' in the eyes of ‘public opinion'. This has lead to a situation where many workers don't understand that it is necessary to struggle against this attack, because if today it is the electricity workers, tomorrow it will be the rest of us.
Workers cannot allow themselves to fall for the lies of the bourgeoisie and its acolytes. The closure of LyFC is not a ‘benefit for the Mexican people': it is a brutal attack against the whole proletariat. The new contracts (perhaps 44,000 lay-offs?) will mean without doubt worse working conditions, while many other workers will be made redundant.
The bourgeoisie and its political apparatus want us to fall for the idea that the electricity workers have been able to do nothing despite the presence of a ‘powerful union', and this means that all workers must submit to the plans of capital and its state and resign themselves to new reductions in their living conditions. No, the proletariat cannot abandon its struggle against capitalism! Today's attacks are the harbinger of those we will all face if we do not oppose them as a class. Therefore, in the face of the attacks that have been unfolding in recent years along with the rise in prices and intensified repression (with the strengthening of the police-military apparatus) it is vital that all parts of the working class - employed and unemployed, permanent and casual workers - understand the need for unity and put it into practice. In order to be able to do this, it is vital to know who our enemies are.
In order to carry out this attack with the least trouble, all the forces of the ruling class have divided up the work: some creating divisions amongst the electricity workers through a sterile electoral struggle between union factions; some by painting the attacks on the living conditions as ‘attacks on the unions and democratic liberties'; while others are creating a lynch-mob atmosphere by presenting the electricity workers as ‘privileged'. They are doing this in order to draw as many workers as possible into an ill-considered struggle to ‘defend the union', and by extension to defend the firm and the national economy. These slogans are part of a strategy to make workers forget their demands as an exploited class.
Following on from this attack (10 October) this campaign has strengthened and taken advantage of the momentary surprise in order to spread feelings of defeat and demoralisation. The unions have been at the forefront of this. This shows that to try and struggle through the union leads straight to defeat, since it has been the union, along with other forces of the state, which has trapped the workers in this impasse. The unions certainly aren't going to advance the struggle, on the contrary. An example of this is the SME putting forward the idea that it is possible to freely resolve this struggle ‘legally, through the courts', leading workers again into the dead end of bureaucratic judicial protection, making them forget how the unions, faced with the modification of the ISSSTE[2] created dispersion, diverted discontent and ended the struggle, all through the use of judicial protection! The judicial and legalistic terrain onto which the unions seek to divert discontent leads to sterile exhaustion, reducing workers to citizens who respect and defend the ‘legal system' (which is only there to legitimise their precarious and miserable conditions) rather than acting as a class.
It is clear that the role of the union is not to unite and push forward the expression of real solidarity, but to divide us. The fact that the government has been able to deliver such a blow against the electricity workers is not some bolt from the blue, but rather the result of the unions' work of division and sabotage over the years.
The bourgeoisie's strategy is to land a definitive blow in order to divert the electricity workers' real discontent and to stop the solidarity of their fellow workers being expressed. In order to do this it is using all of its forces to try and drag the workers onto the terrain of the defence of the nation and the unions; that is, they want to imprison us in a struggle that does not try to question the system of capitalist exploitation and, finally, they tell us that we can best express our discontent through our vote in the next electoral circus.
Solidarity is not some union pantomime where one union boss declares his support for another, nor is it fictitious ‘moral support'. Real solidarity takes place through and in the struggle. Today, as at all similar times and situations, the electricity workers are being attacked and the rest of the proletariat must express real solidarity, which is nothing other than a will to struggle without distinction between the unemployed and employed, between sectors, or between regions. To express real solidarity workers must hold assemblies open to the whole proletariat (employed, unemployed and other sectors) where the situation that faces everyone is discussed and the discontent turned into a movement controlled by workers themselves and not by the union structure.
In order to carry out this attack, the unions are trying to isolate the electricity workers from their class brothers and to enrol them into mobilisations such as the one being promoted by Lopez Obrador[3] which seek to enclose and hamstring the workers, to prevent them looking for their own means of struggle, to trap them in a false choice about state or private firms, thus leaving them open to attacks from all sides. Workers must reflect together, outside of and against the unions, in order to organise a struggle to try to stop the attacks. If we leave ourselves in the hands of the unions and the political parties, we are condemning ourselves to defeat. A slogan of the class war is being heard again in the world: ‘the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves'; and we have to remember that the exploited have nothing to lose but their chains!
10/9
Grupo Socialista Libertario
webgsl.wordpress.com [15]
Revolution Mundial
[email protected] [16]
Proyecto Anarquista Metropolitano
proyectoanarquistametropolitano.blogspot.com
Dear class comrades in Mexico
We have learned with indignation about what happened on Saturday 10 October. This is yet another proof of the putrefaction and dehumanisation which the capitalist system is dragging us into.
In Mexico as in Peru, the living conditions of the workers are miserable; private and state enterprises pay meagre wages which aren't enough to buy the basic necessities; lay-offs on the other hand have become our daily bread. Unemployment is a plague ravaging the big urban centres; theft, delinquency, prostitution have become daily occurrences in our lives. It's as though we the workers have become used to living in a cess pit. The media, both in Mexico and in Peru, do nothing but attack the least sign of protest by the proletariat, whenever it demands some ‘right' which the bourgeoisie has promised us. Then they call us rebels, and when we struggle to demand what really belongs to us because we are the producer class in society, they call us terrorists. In the best of cases, the press serves only to distract us and confuse our minds. We have seen clearly that the media in Mexico have elaborated a whole campaign to discredit the electrical sector where many of you work. It's no accident if these same media have prepared the social terrain to make sure that other sectors of the proletariat stay resigned and cowed at a time when police repression is coming down on you, to chase you away from the places you have built, from your workplaces where you can earn your living somehow or another. Brothers! We are one social class, there in Mexico or here in Peru; we send you our total solidarity in these very difficult moments you are going though; we are against exploitation, whether by the state or private bosses. We know very well that it is necessary to fight for the abolition of this shared exploitation, because it is the source of the poverty, hunger and degradation we are suffering. But for now it is necessary to work and on this basis, to organise ourselves so that we don't get manipulated and crushed by ‘leaders' who claim to be our representatives. Here in Peru many workers, teachers, students, and unemployed people have experienced in the flesh the deceitfulness of the trade unions. It's true that we are very young and maybe some of you will say that there are really working class trade unions which fight for your rights. Well comrades, for once we ask you to have confidence in youth, because this part of the youth only has confidence in you, in your strength, in your solidarity and your unity. We are with you and not with the trade unions, or with any left wing or right wing leader. We hope that you will organise yourselves as workers, that you will debate, discuss, convoke assemblies with all proletarian sectors and decide yourselves what to do for your future. Isolation is poison to your struggle. It has to generalise to other sectors of the proletariat. You must not be afraid to ask other comrades to join your cause, which is the same as theirs. It's only then that strikes, work stoppages or street demonstrations or any other method you judge to be effective can really achieve their objectives.
We ask you to listen to us because we have been through the same problems as you and not only in the electricity sector, but in all sectors of the economy. For us it is clear that the problem is not limited to the electricity branch, the problem is not just Mexican and it's not just Latin American. The problem is not the government, nor the USA. The problem is the system of exploitation. Capitalism is an inhuman system by nature, its laws and its state legalise exploitation, lay-offs and unemployment; they legalise the trade unions so that they can deceive you, so that you end up acting in the defence of their interests, which are none other than the bourgeoisie's interest in realising its profits from our lives.
We know that many of you have a family, children to feed; that you obviously don't want to find yourselves out of work, that some of you are thinking of throwing in the towel....but we, children of the proletarian class, who see reflected in you the image of our parents or older brothers, we ask you to continue the struggle, to teach us, to educate us by defending what is rightfully yours, without allowing yourselves to be marched behind a handful of bourgeois, a group of entrepreneurs, imbued with vanity and stacks of cash, and who have never worked. We ask you, comrades, to continue the struggle, to solidarise with each other, to unify to demand the restoration of your jobs, to wage the struggle against those who, day after day, make this world what it is. A world of poverty and pollution on the earth, in the air and in the waters.
We hope that you will win a victory on this occasion. There are thousands of us workers to every bourgeois. The police want to break your courage and your solidarity, like the unions who defend a country which does not belong to you, to defend those who exploit you, defend this old and rotten system. Whereas you, our brothers, are defending life, a new society, a new future, a future which every day grows more possible in the serried unity of your fists.
In Peru, we are a group of young proletarians, teachers, workers, high school students and university students and we send you our fraternal class greetings. We are with you in your hatred of capital; we join you in your indignation against the massive lay-offs you face and the weighty task of putting a meal on your tables every day. We are in solidarity with the struggles you are waging and will continue to wage. Don't give up comrades! Unite! That's where your strength resides and we will do all we can to support you. The mass of the exploited need to speak up against the threats from the Mexican bourgeois state which is the same as those we face in Peru or elsewhere. Your pain is ours, your tears against injustice are ours, your fists and your courage are ours. From here we call on you to organise open general assemblies, debates and discussions that will enable you to organise and confront the exploiters.
Finally, we are aware of the fact that while winning this battle would be a great success, once the objective is obtained, it's still not enough, it's not simply a matter of going to work and forgetting about it. We have to go further, to see the underlying problem, which is and will always be the capitalist system, and not this president or that policy. This is why we have no confidence in Ollanta's nationalist party in Peru, or in Chavez, or in Evo Morales, or the PRI, or the PRD[4] or in any other party of the left of the bourgeoisie, however radical they claim to be. We only have confidence in the party of the workers, the real party of the proletariat which doesn't only fight against the exploitation, the abuses and oppression of this system, but which also fights for the destruction of this system. We are talking about a communist party, the only one that can belong to us, and whose formation on a world scale is the task of the day, because exploitation exists on a world scale and it is the role of the communist party to struggle for its abolition. The power to decide what to do with production, what to do with the work of everyone, has to belong to the producer, to the proletariat, and no one else.
Comrades: organisation, solidarity and autonomous class struggle against capital and its clique of followers- that is where our hope resides. Struggle is the only way forward, not to reform the system, not just to obtain a necessary demand, but struggle to abolish this system, because otherwise everything will continue as before and our children will still be fighting not to be thrown out of work by the bourgeoisie. Towards the new society which we alone can build, we must all unite for the world proletarian revolution
Down with the social democratic reformist groups!
Down with the trade unions who negotiate the lives of the workers!
Long live the struggle of the international proletariat!
Workers of Mexico, Peru, and the whole world unite against capital!
Only the world wide unity of the working class can free humanity from poverty!
Forward to the struggle, comrades!
Nucleo Proletario en Peru 24/9/9
Every time the bourgeois state wants to sell, privatise or declare bankrupt a state enterprise, it puts forward arguments such as: ‘the company was losing money', ‘it was not profitable', ‘it was a burden on the state'...this whole series of lies has been put forward by the Mexican bourgeoisie today. Many Mexican specialists have said the opposite (cf TV Azteca 22/10/09) while others have repeated the arguments mentioned above, telling us that the electricity enterprise Luz y Fuerza was a bottomless pit for the state.
What's certain is that all the disadvantages are falling on the backs of the workers in the form of unemployment. More than 44,000 jobs are going to go following the liquidation of Electrica Luz y Fuerza. All workers are threatened by this plague of unemployment - that's the only thing that capitalism can guarantee. And now it is the turn of the Mexican bourgeoisie, under the pressure of the world crisis, to take measures to readjust and reduce personnel. But this is very far from being an isolated fact. The same thing is happening in Peru and all over the world. It's a tsunami, a massive and directed attack against the proletariat on a world scale, making living and working conditions increasingly precarious. All the bourgeoisies of the world know very well that they have to carry out such measures if they are to keep their heads above water in this brutal crisis. And the only way to do it is to hit the living conditions of the world's workers with increasing force.
What is clear is that capitalism can no longer guarantee anything to humanity. This is shown very well by what the Mexican state is doing to the workers of Luz y Fuerza.
The workers must never forget that the politicians and the unions are not the solution but part of the problem. They are the ones in charge of the continuity of the system of capitalist exploitation: their appeals for social peace, democracy, the country and order are not ours. They will never do anything to help us. They are there to carry out the instructions of the ruling class. The struggle of the workers only has a future outside the unions and all forms of political opportunism. The proletariat must organise itself and maintain its class unity in order to get through what it is experiencing in Mexico
What the workers of Mexico and elsewhere must remember is that the attacks on their living conditions are going to continue, they will be closer together and more intense until the situation becomes unbearable. The working class must understand that it possesses the weapons to struggle against the situation capitalism is imposing on it today: these weapons are class solidarity, confidence in itself and in its struggles on the local and the global level.
Workers of all countries, unite!
GLP 24/10/09
Dear comrades, little more than a month has passed since the night of the 10th October when the Mexican bourgeoisie in collusion with its state security forces and front line agents hidden within the proletarian movement - the unions of all colours and types - carried out the action for which they exist: weakening the proletariat and trampling it underfoot. This was achieved by stunning the workers with the sight of proletarian blood and deceiving them with negotiations, the fervent coming and goings and 'sacrifices' of the union leaders, along with their hundred and one tall stories, all of which served to hide their real intention: defending the interests of their masters the Mexican bourgeoisie.
The proletariat has experienced acts like those of the 10th October ever since it began to rise up against the bourgeoisie's dehumanised frenzy for profit, gain, money, and the extraction of surplus-value. Remember Bloody Sunday, 9 February 1905, in the streets of Saint Petersburg, in Czarist Russia, the antechamber to the glorious Red October of 1917; in Ecuador at the beginning of the last century, there was the 15 November 1922, when hundreds of protesting workers demanding better living conditions were struck down and thrown into the Guayas river which flows into the port of Guayaquil; in modern times, in 1979, there was the massacre of sugar harvesting workers of the sugar firm AZTRA, La Troncal, province of Cánar, where more than two hundred workers were thrown into canals and riddled with bullets by the forces of order: this marked the beginning of the period of ‘democracy’, which was just another means for prolonging the bourgeoisie's rule.
If we investigated the history of the class struggle more closely the list would be as enormous as humanity's need for better world. But we will learn nothing from simply recording and lamenting these facts, which is what the unions, the parties of the left of capital and the leftists do with their pompous commemorations around this or that significant struggle of the working class. These ideological and organic agents of capital know nothing about the essence of marxism; they have no interest in drawing the lessons of these struggles. For them marxism is only hollow phrases, slogans to be repeated in discussions, a form of ideological window-dressing. We must overcome misfortune, we must look at the facts, understand and assimilate the lessons that they give us. We must be valiant in the face of adversity and tenaciously begin reflecting, discussing and clarifying in the community of struggle, with comrades faced with punishment squads, those losing their jobs, workers in other areas, other firms, others cities, other countries.
Fellow proletarians - this is not all: here, in September, there were similar national protests for the same reasons: defence of wages, jobs, a dignified life, decent redundancy payments, etc, but the union traitors ingeniously led the workers down the roads of parliament, the law and lawyers. We are faced with the same problem, the need to overcome the barriers of the bourgeoisie: the unions, the parties of the left of capital and the leftists, parliament, the courts, central government and the nation.
Comrades let us tell you that we are united with you from the bottom of our hearts in solidarity: you have profoundly posed to us the need to reflect on the theoretical and practical legacy that the history of the struggle of the working class has left us. We believe that in this way, understanding your suffering in the light of the experience of the class struggle, we can transmit to our proletarian comrades in this part of the planet the lessons to be learnt. Comrades, from a distance, we say: do not be discouraged or lose heart, the future is yours, the road is strewn with rocks; but together, united in solidarity through the class struggle, we will be triumphant and humanity will win its future. In the words of the Communist Manifesto elaborated by comrades Marx and Engels in 1847: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” We are firmly convinced that only reflection, discussion and clarification can give us the strength to tear down the walls thrown up by the forces of the bourgeoisie and thus bring about a truly human society. COMMUNISM.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
NDIE (Núcleo de Discusión Internacionalista de Ecuador),Guayaquil, 11/9
[1] Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC) is a public company that distributes electricity above all in the Mexican capital. The Mexican state carried out the closure following massive losses, on the 11th October 2009 following the police occupation of all its offices on the 10th.
[2] Social security for state workers
[3] Candidate of the left in the last Mexican presidential elections (2006) who denounced it as a fix, and began a campaign of ‘civil disobedience' against the government.
[4] Ollanta is the leader of the ultranationalist left party in Peru. The PRI is the ‘revolutionary' party which has governed Mexico for 70 years. The PRD, which is an old split from the PRI, is today a party of the left.
The present ‘recession' is not unique to Britain. It is not the result of Labour's mismanagement of the economy. It is not caused by the greed of the bankers or by ‘neo-liberal' economic policies. It is a crisis of capitalist relations of production on a global scale. And this is why all the propaganda about ‘recovery' is a lie, aimed at obscuring the real bankruptcy of the present system of exploitation.
Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne says that Britain is the exception to a trend for recovery in major economies. "It is now official that Britain is the only G20 country still in recession. Labour's disastrous economic policies meant Britain was one of the first into recession and now we are the last out."
We are likely to hear a lot more of this banter in the run-up to a general election. For a more serious view on the state of the world economy we might turn to Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the International Monetary Fund in a recent speech to the Confederation of British Industry. Admitting that the global economy was in a "highly fragile" state he said that "Financial conditions have improved but are far from normal" and he thought that "Signs show confidence returning, but banking systems in many advanced economies remain undercapitalised, weighed down by leaden legacy assets and, increasingly, underperforming loans." Also "On the household side, weak financial positions and high unemployment will damp down on consumption for some time ... and large public deficits add to vulnerabilities." Reminding us that certain indicators were still predicted to get worse for the foreseeable future he said "it is difficult to claim that the crisis is over when unemployment is at historic highs and getting higher still."
As for the ‘recovery' of other countries, he saw no reason to stop all the various government measures that have been introduced across the world as there could still be further turmoil in the months ahead that might warrant further state intervention. The main weakness in Strauss-Kahn's comments was that he saw the growing demands from Chinese consumers as offering the best prospect for a sustained recovery for the world economy.
George Osborne blames Labour for the state of the economy. There have been many other scapegoats named as being responsible for the economic crisis. The Left blames neo-liberalism and deregulation. The Right sees state controls holding back entrepreneurs. Lots of people have a go at financial speculators and greedy bankers. Some say that what we are experiencing is just part of the normal ‘business cycle'
In reality the current phase of the crisis is unprecedented in capitalism's history. Even those commentators that see some future ‘recovery' accept that the economy will be irretrievably scarred and will not be returning to past levels of activity that were only sustained by huge amounts of debt.
Just look at the banking sector. In Britain we are only now discovering the true extent of government intervention a year after it took place. And the IMF thinks that internationally there could be more revelations to come of the true extent of the crisis with maybe as much as 50 percent of bank losses still hidden away in balance sheets.
When Osbourne says that the British situation is different to others he's not entirely wrong. The effects of the crisis on Dubai throw some light on this. Dubai's diminishing offshore oil reserves will be exhausted in 20 years. Apart from re-exports it has no real industry and few natural resources beyond dates and dried fish. Its staggeringly ambitious building projects have been exposed as no more than a form of speculation founded on borrowed money. It has been trying to establish itself as a financial centre, but at a time of crisis in the financial sector it's been on a hiding to nothing.
Among other historic factors the British economy's enormous reliance on financial services (and the long term decline of manufacturing) has left it more exposed to the storms that affected the financial sector globally.
Although there are British specificities, these can only be understood in the context of a crisis of world economy as a whole.
For all the propaganda about the end of the recession governments, academics and commentators still discuss whether the response of the capitalist state has been adequate to stimulate a recovery in the economy.
For example, the policy of low interest rates and quantitative easing (printing money) if it ‘succeeds' is still only financing a bubble that will itself burst one day.
In reality, after years of trying to maintain growth rates and profits, while keeping inflation as low as possible, the ruling class now faces the prospect of actually encouraging inflation, which, if it succeeds would be completely uncontrollable.
In fact the attempts at stimulating the economy do not yet seem to be having the intended effect. For all the liquidity injected into the economy by the state (governments, central banks etc) the vast bulk of it is not circulating. It's remaining in the banks, or returning to the banks in the form of loans. The fact that money has not started circulating, that money in circulation continues to shrink despite the actions of states, is an expression not of a crisis of liquidity but a major and irreversible crisis of insolvency.
Despite all the efforts of governments credit has not started flowing, again, and is still in retreat. Banks are simply unable to open the valves of credit either because of the internal financial situation of borrowers or because the rare potential borrowers cannot offer sufficient collateral.
Also there are so many companies, and above all households, that are indebted for life and are no longer able to borrow even at zero interest rates.
The general crisis of insolvency means that there has been no recovery in investment by companies, in demand for raw materials, in the transport of commodities.
That is why the perspective of growing unemployment is built into the real state of the economy. In an article entitled ‘The recovery is an impostor' US commentator Bill Bonner summarises the situation as "No new jobs = no new income. No new income = no new sales. No new sales = no new profits = no new jobs." This is not exactly how the capitalist economy works, but Bonner is a good example of a bourgeois commentator who can't see how there can possibly be a real recovery in the capitalist economy. He says we're in a depression.
Unemployment is not the only way that the crisis hits the working class. In the US the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not keep records of pay cuts, but it does have an index of total weekly pay for production workers. "That index had fallen for 10 consecutive months before rising in July and August, an unprecedented string over the 44 years the Bureau has calculated weekly pay, capturing the large number of people out of work, those working fewer hours and those whose wages have been cut. The old record was a two-month decline, during the 1981-1982 recession."(New York Times 13/10/9).
As a Bureau official put it "the amount of money people are paid has taken a big hit; not just those who have lost their jobs, but those who are still employed."
This is what the capitalist economy has to offer the working class, and there is little perspective even for the creation of a mini-boom through the intervention of the state. On the contrary, there is no policy that the state can implement that will not create the conditions for even more violent convulsions of global capitalism.
Car 1/12/9
In WR 329 [23]we reviewed a recent book by Simon Pirani,[1] which deals sympathetically with the left-wing communist oppositions expelled from the Bolshevik Party in the early 1920s. Pirani, a former Trotskyist who is now critical of Trotskyist positions, has also recently written a review of the ICC's book on the Russian Communist Left, which appeared in the journal Revolutionary History.[2] Here, in a response written by a close sympathiser, we want to deal with his specific criticisms of our book, and to comment on what seem to us to be the wider issues raised.
Pirani welcomes the publication of the historical documents included in the ICC's book, many of them for the first time in English. He recognises that the positions of the Russian Communist Left were more radical than those of the Trotskyist Left Opposition, and claims to agree with the ICC's position on the early degeneration of the Russian Revolution, finding "compelling" a 1977 text which "offers an account of the retreat of the Soviet state from socialist aims that in retrospect seems more convincing than some others available to those active in left politics 30 years ago".
This approach, which recognises the political importance of the Communist Left, is obviously positive, and reflects the sympathetic approach of his own book.
Pirani's first criticism is of how the ICC deals with the history of the revolutionary movement. He chides us for ignoring recent historical research on the communist opposition in Russia, and for being more interested in "judging the left communists' documents textually, against what [we] regard as immutable communist standards, than in the actual struggles during which these documents appeared..." He specifically criticises the book's coverage of the Kronstadt uprising for offering a "lamentable" lack of evidence that the garrison was revolutionary and relying instead on "doctrinal faith".
While it's true that some ‘communist standards' are ‘immutable' in the sense that they remain fundamentally valid in all periods of working class history (internationalism, for example), the communist programme is something that develops through the experience of the class and the reflection of revolutionary minorities on that experience. The whole aim of our series on communism, from which some of the essays in this book are taken, is to demonstrate this against ideas of an ‘invariant' communist programme.
For all their hesitations and confusions, the contribution made by the left communist currents in the Bolshevik Party to understanding how and why the Russian Revolution degenerated was absolutely crucial in laying the foundations of the clarity defended today by the groups of the communist left - the very clarity that Pirani now finds ‘compelling'.
The purpose of the ICC in publishing the book, stated clearly in its introduction, was to enable a new generation of revolutionaries today (not least in Russia itself) to better understand the work of the left communist currents, "not only to demonstrate the continuity of their political traditions, but also because without a thorough assimilation of the work and concrete experience of the left fractions, it would be impossible for the new groups to develop the theoretical and organisational solidity they need if they themselves are to survive and grow."
In this context, the specific aim of the section dealing with the Kronstadt uprising was not to prove yet again the proletarian nature of the uprising (although it does cite the list of delegates elected to the provisional revolutionary committee and the points of the Kronstadters' platform as evidence of this), but rather to examine the debates within the Communist Party in Russia; the positions adopted at the time by representatives of the opposition, and the political lessons drawn by the Communist Left. If the Italian Left in the 1930s was able to draw the essential lesson of Kronstadt - that socialism could not be imposed on the proletariat by force - it was primarily because it based itself firmly on a marxist political framework, and in particular on a defence of the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution; not because of research on the garrison's composition.
We think that Pirani's criticisms reveal a certain tendency towards academicism. We share his interest in the ‘lives lived' by individual militants and ‘the circumstances that shaped their dissident activity', but as a revolutionary marxist organisation we believe it is only by examining the political positions defended by revolutionaries in the past, and understanding the political debates and analyses behind them, that can we strengthen the revolutionary movement of today.
Pirani also questions the political and organisational continuity of left communism in Russia, rejecting the claim that it had a continued existence from 1918 to the 1930s defending a distinctive set of political positions, and argues that its positions were "largely irrelevant to the waves of communist dissidence in 1921-23 and 1927-29".
He singles out for criticism the study by our comrade Ian, who before his untimely death in 1997 was engaged in original research on the Russian communist left. Ian's research showed, for example, that many known members of the 1923 Workers' Group were also members of the Left Communist fraction in 1918, and he described in some detail the process by which the former won over elements from the Workers' Opposition and the Democratic Centralists. It's true that Ian also lists a set of political positions to distinguish the Russian left communists, which can give the impression that all these positions were defended by all expressions of left communism in Russia and internationally from the 1920s on, whereas a number of these positions (such as the characterisation of the trade unions as capitalist organisations) only emerged through the discussions and debates that traversed the left communist currents for many decades after the revolutionary wave. But the rest of the book gives a critical appraisal of the positions defended by groupings like the Workers' Truth and the ‘Decists', which need to be understood - along with Trotsky's Left Opposition - as part of the wider left-wing opposition within the Bolshevik Party.
Sadly Ian's research remained unfinished, and readers today will have to make their own judgements about the question of organisational continuity, although a quick re-read of his study reveals a myriad of concrete links between the 1918 Left Communists and the Workers' Group, and between the 1921 Workers' Opposition and the Sapranov group of 1927 - to the extent that one is led to wonder why Pirani seems so determined to ignore the evidence - but in any case the book as a whole makes no claims for the organisational continuity of left communism in Russia, which is of secondary importance to the political continuity between the most intransigent elements who fought against the betrayals of the old workers' parties, and between them and the groups of the Communist Left today.
Pirani essentially sets up a ‘straw man' to knock down, instead of engaging with the main arguments presented by the ICC about the political significance of the left currents in the Bolshevik Party - arguments that his own book appears to be largely in agreement with.
As for left communist positions being irrelevant, the Workers' Group was targeted for repression precisely because of its influence in the working class and its willingness to intervene in their struggles. While its programmatic positions inevitably remained unknown to all but a tiny minority of workers in Russia, it was these same positions that allowed the left communists to relate directly to the workers' concerns and at least try to provide effective political leadership to the spontaneous strike movements of 1923.
Finally, Pirani criticises the ICC's book for ‘clinging' to the concept of the ‘vanguard party'. We noted in our previous review Pirani's rejection of ‘vanguardism', which for him played a wholly negative role, both in Bolshevik politics and subsequently the international workers' movement. This rejection is not so surprising given his political break with the Trotskyist movement which today specialises in turning the Bolsheviks' errors into a hardened counter-revolutionary ideology. But to reject ‘vanguardism' per se is to turn your back not just on the whole experience of the Russian revolution but on the history of the workers' movement and the position defended by Marx and Engels, for whom the communists are nothing but "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country" (Communist Manifesto) - in other words, the vanguard.
The ICC doesn't ‘cling' to the concept of the vanguard party; we openly defend the need for the formation of a world communist party in the proletariat's future revolutionary struggles.. For us, the Bolshevik party was the spearhead of the October insurrection, whose profoundly proletarian character was demonstrated precisely by the fact that its degeneration provoked such a significant response from its most intransigently revolutionary elements. The struggle of the left fractions was a struggle to resist the counter-revolutionary tide sweeping through the Bolshevik party and reclaim it for the working class.
Having acted as a real vanguard in the period 1914-1917, where it led the opposition to the imperialist war and was at the forefront of the combat for proletarian power, the Bolshevik party's capacity to continue with this ‘leading' role was progressively undermined by its entanglement with the Soviet state and its increasingly substitutionist ideas about its relationship with the class as a whole. But this tragic process did not eliminate the need for a communist vanguard: as the party degenerated, it was precisely the left fractions who became the advanced guard in the defence of revolutionary principles, even if this was now of necessity a task to be carried out in a much more negative period for the working class.
MH 30/11/9
see also
Book review: Simon Pirani, The Russian revolution in retreat, 1920-1924 [23]
[1] The Russian revolution in retreat, 1920-1924: soviet workers and the new communist elite, Routledge, 2008.
[2] Revolutionary History, vol. 10, no.1. The same issue contains an interesting selection of writings by Rosa Luxemburg. For readers who are unfamiliar with it, Revolutionary History is a British-based journal dealing with the history of the revolutionary movement "mainly", to quote its website, "from a Trotskyist viewpoint". In the past Revolutionary History has shown itself to be hostile to the political positions defended by the communist left. In fact, despite considering itself to be a serious publication, over the last 20 years it has tended to avoid dealing with the history of left communism altogether, but where this has not been possible it has distorted its positions and tried to minimise its political significance; in a review of the ICC's Italian Communist Left pamphlet in 1995, for example, the journal's founder Al Richardson dismissed the majority of the Italian Left in the 1930s as "a harem of political eunuchs" and bracketed their denunciation of the social democratic parties after 1914 with the politics of "1960s Maoism" (see Revolutionary History, vol. 6, no 1, 1995, pp198-199).
In recent months, flashy titles on covers showing large portraits of Marx have been flourishing on bookshop shelves. There is something for everyone. The biblical: "Marx is still alive". The classic "The return of Marx". The emphatic: "Marx, the reasons for a revival". The repetitive, lacking imagination: "The comeback of Marx". Or the sober but in capital letters: "MARX"[1]. In their own way, all these magazines, spicing it up with critiques, have praised the genius of this "great thinker"!
This sudden love is surprising. A few years ago, Marx was depicted as the devil! Moreover, Francoise Giroud even wrote a biography of Jenny Marx, wife of Karl, with the simple title: ‘Jenny Marx, or the devil's wife'. He is the one responsible for the horrors of the Stalinist labour camps in Siberia and China, the bloody dictatorships of Ceausescu or Pol Pot.
So why this turnaround? Because the economic crisis has unfolded. The current situation is a grave concern for the working class. And some of them, a minority, are trying to understand why capitalism is moribund, how to resist the degradation of their living conditions, how to fight back and especially - which is harder today - understand whether or not another world is possible. And naturally, some are turning to Marx. Moreover, the sales of Das Capital have also been on the rise recently. This phenomenon is not happening inside the whole working class, but even so, the start of this reflection within a minority, even its subterranean development, is bothering the bourgeoisie. The ruling class hates it when workers begin to think for themselves! It's always eager to feed them its propaganda and lies and, today, its vision of Marx, its vision of marxism.
Depicting Marx as the devil is not sufficient today to discourage the most curious from examining his works, so the bourgeoisie has been forced to change tactics. It has become tolerant, amiable, and reverent, even flattering, towards the old bearded one... the better to denature him and reduce him to a harmless icon like Lenin's mummy!
According to these magazines, Marx was an economic genius (had he not denounced the fatal role of money, the principal root of all evil, long before Benedict XVI?). A great philosopher, a great sociologist and even a forerunner in ecology! The bourgeoisie is now prepared to recognize all Marx's talents, all but one that is, the fact that he was a great revolutionary and a fighter for the working class. And marxism is a theoretical weapon forged by the working class to overthrow capitalism. Or, to borrow a phrase from Lenin "Marxism is the theory of the liberation of the proletariat" (The bankruptcy of the 2nd International, 1915).
Marx was not born a communist. He became one. And it was the working class that ‘converted' him. The young Marx was even very critical of the communist theories of his day. Here's what he had to say:
- "Communist ideas are not acceptable in their present form, not even theoretically, so there's even less hope of their practical realisation, no point considering their possibility" (‘Communism and the Allgemeine Zeitung Augsburg')
- Or, in a letter to Ruge, communism is "a dogmatic abstraction".
Initially, therefore, Marx considered "communist ideas" idealistic and dogmatic. Why was this?
Ever since people on earth have been oppressed, man has dreamt of a better world, a kind of paradise on earth, a community where all people are equal and social justice prevails. This was true for the slaves. This was true for the serfs (peasants). In Spartacus' great revolt against the Roman Empire, the slaves who revolted tried to establish communities. The first Christian communities preached the universal brotherhood of man and tried to impose a communism of possessions. John Ball, a leader of the peasants' revolt in England in 1381 (and there were many peasant revolts against feudalism) said: "Nothing will go well in England until everything is held in common and when there will be no more lords or vassals ...." But each time it could only be a beautiful dream. Under Greece or ancient Rome, in the Middle Ages, building a communist world was impossible. Firstly, society was not producing enough to meet all its needs. There could only be a minority, exploiting the majority, that could live comfortably. Thus, there was no social force powerful enough to build an egalitarian world: each revolt would end with the massacre of slaves or peasants. In short, "communist ideas" could only be utopian.
And at first the working class, as an exploited class itself, renewed these old dreams. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, in England, and especially in France, it attempted at times to establish communities. Some thinkers tried to create a perfect world in their imagination. This is why Marx added the adjective "dogmatic" to that of "utopian". These "communist ideas" were "dogmatic" because they were complete inventions based on timeless and immutable ideals like justice, goodness, equality... they would not have to be built little by little, in the permanent interaction between material reality and the brain of man; instead reality was asked to comply with the requirements of these thoughts and the desire for Justice, Equality and the rest.
But why then did Marx finally devote his life to the fight for communism? In fact, his views would be completely changed by his understanding of what the working class is and by witnessing its strikes. Through the struggles of the Silesian weavers in 1844 or those, a little later, of the proletariat in France in 1848, Marx discovered the nature of the working class and its combat. And for him, this combat provided clear evidence of the indispensable motor for transforming the world, a living promise of the future, the first real indication that communism is possible. Here are a few lines that show how Marx was struck by what he had witnessed:
"When communist workmen gather together, their immediate aim is instruction, propaganda, etc.. But at the same time they acquire a new need - the need for society (...). Company, association, conversation which in its turn has society as its goal, is enough for them. The brotherhood of man is not just a hollow phrase, it is a reality and the nobility of man shines forth upon us from their work-worn figures." (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).
This is a little bit lyrical but what Marx sees here is that, unlike the previous exploited classes, the proletariat is a class of associated labour. To begin with, this means that it can only defend its immediate interests by means of an associated struggle, by uniting its forces. But it also means that the ultimate response to its status as an exploited class can only lie in the creation of a real human society, a society based on free cooperation. Above all, this "association" has "the means of fulfilling its ambitions" for the first time, because it can build on the tremendous progress made by capitalist industry. Technically, abundance is possible. With the advances made by capitalism, it is possible to satisfy all of humanity's needs. Marx was able to understand all this because the working class made it possible for him.
To summarise, Marx, but clearly Engels as well, adopted the perspective of the working class and made its revolutionary struggle their own, examined the potential of the proletariat on one side, and the crises and contradictions that afflict capitalism on the other, and gradually they realised that communism had become both possible and necessary. Possible and necessary because of:
- the development of the productive forces worldwide, without which there cannot be abundance or the complete satisfaction of human needs;
- the birth of the proletariat, the first exploited class which, in its confrontation with global capital, will take on the mantle of gravedigger of the old world;
- the unavoidably transitory nature of capitalism.
Indeed, only a class whose emancipation will necessarily lead to the emancipation of the whole of humanity, whose domination over society does not entail a new form of exploitation but the abolition of all exploitation, could have a marxist approach to human history and social relations. All other classes were and still are, totally incapable of this. As we've already said, for the slaves or serfs, another world could only be imaginary. Their approach, their thinking, could be no more than utopian and idealistic. As for the ruling classes, the masters, the nobles or the bourgeois, they were and they still are unable to face up to reality, to study the evolution of human history and their own world objectively, otherwise they would be forced to see that their class, their world, their privileges were and are condemned to disappear.
The nobility felt invested with divine, and therefore eternal, rights. How could it understand the real evolution of human societies?
There's another, more specific and topical example than that. Marx is now acknowledged by all the economists who seek solutions in his famous book, Das Capital, to address the current crisis. This looks very much like the Holy Grail, vain and irrational. These economists can read and reread all the pages of Capital, they can twist them in every way possible, but a drop from the fountain of eternal youth will not fall on capitalism. On the contrary! If Marx was immersed in studying the economy, it is precisely so he could understand the mechanisms that eat away at capitalism from within and therefore condemn it to perish. He did not set out to find cures for the problems of capitalism but to fight against it and prepare its overthrow. All our doctors of science, and other specialists in ideology, will never be able to understand anything of the economic literature of Marx because his conclusions are totally unacceptable and even untenable for them!
Having a scientific and objective approach to the question of the history of human societies, to the social question, means recognising that primitive communism existed, then slavery, then feudalism, then capitalism (and that communism is then possible) because our productive capacities evolved, because the way that society had to organise itself to produce - our relations of production - had to evolve along with it and that finally all this has been embodied in the history of class struggles. We understand why Marxism - this "scientific and objective approach to the history of human societies and the social question" - is totally inaccessible to the bourgeoisie. Quite simply, the logical conclusion of this approach is that capitalism should disappear and the privileges of the bourgeoisie with it!
As the bourgeoisie blathers on about Marx and Marxism today, it all goes to show that the bourgeoisie is attempting to hide behind its lies and falsifications. As Lenin said in The State and Revolution: "During the lifetime of great revolutionaries the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the ‘consolation' of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it.". The final phrase is particularly relevant for the current propaganda "... emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it".
We ourselves, by contrast, must insist that Marx was a revolutionary fighter. And even more: that only a militant revolutionary can be a marxist. This unity between thought and action is simply one of the foundations of marxism. This is what Marx had to say: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it" (Theses on Feurbach); or "The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or priniciples that have been invented or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from an historical movement going on under our very eyes" (Communist Manifesto).
Marxism is not an academic discipline or yet another wise and harmless theory, or a utopia, or an ideology, or a dogma. On the contrary! We will finish off in the fiery manner of Rosa Luxemburg with this final quote: "Marxism is not a chapel where certificates of ‘expertise' are issued and the mass of believers demonstrate their blind faith in them. Marxism is a revolutionary understanding of the world, the call to a ceaseless struggle for change, a vision that abhores nothing so much as fixed and final formulas and only discovers its real force in the clash of weapons of self-criticism and with the thunderbolts of history" (The Accumulatioon of Capital).
Pawel 8/10/9
[1] Respectively: Challenges (December 2007), Courrier International (July 2008), le Magazine Littéraire (October 2008) Le Nouvel Observateur (August 2009), Le Point (special issue, June / July 2009).
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