The election campaign is already underway and one of the main points at issue between the parties is the problem of Britain's vast mountain of debt. On January 25 Brown and Cameron held back-to-back press conferences where they addressed the issue head on. Cameron accused the government of "moral cowardice" for failing to take "early action" to deal with the £178 billion budget deficit. He warned that the UK was borrowing £6000 every second. Brown, speaking the day before the official figures announced the ‘end of the recession', countered by arguing that sweeping cuts would put the ‘recovery' at risk.

Brown said: "I am confident that the UK economy is emerging from recession. But there are dangerous global forces...which mean that the world and the UK economy remain fragile. ..That is why we are all agreed around the world that we must reduce our deficits steadily, according to a plan, but that we must do nothing this year which would put the recovery, growth, and jobs at risk. Just as we were right to intervene stop collapsing banks destroying the financial economy...so it is right now we do what is necessary to lock in the economy for 2010" (Guardian 25/1/10)

Cameron is right to point out, as he does in the Tories' glossy poster campaign, that "we can't go on like this". The so-called economic boom of the last decade, advertised by Brown and New Labour as proof that the British economy was achieving the highest rates of growth for over two hundred years, was an utter fraud, based on the very flight into debt that plunged it into the ‘credit crunch' of 2008. Despite all the talk of coming out of recession, the underlying brittleness of the UK economy is plainly recognised by the international bourgeoisie. Thus Bill Gross, co-founder of the world's biggest buyer of bonds, the California-based Pimco, warned that Britain is a "must to avoid" for investors and that its economy lies "on a bed of nitro-glycerine". Because it has the "highest debt levels and a finance-oriented economy" it is completely exposed to the financial storms beating at the doors of the world economy (Guardian 27/1/10).

The huge burden of debt building up on the shoulders of the UK economy creates tremendous inflationary pressures which, in the long term, threaten to completely undermine the value of the UK's currency. Cameron is not wrong to say that this state of affairs is untenable.

Brown, for his part, is right to say that the ‘recovery' is fragile. The recent recession was the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The official claim that Britain has emerged from the recession is based on a few months of 0.1% growth. Brown doesn't dwell too much on the fact that in Britain today most ‘growth' is in any case not based on the production of real values but on the semi-mythical realm of financial manipulation and speculation. Nevertheless he is also quite right to say that without the ‘supportive actions' taken by the government, the recession would have been far more catastrophic than it was. Unfortunately the ‘supportive action' has largely involved the kinds of measures that got the economy into its current mess in the first place: international borrowing on a huge scale, doling out money to the consumer to boost demand (the ‘scrappage scheme' which has kept the ailing UK car industry puttering on for a little longer) and, most transparent of all, "quantitative easing": printing money.

Capitalism's historic bankruptcy

That's enough credit to the politicians. They are merely expressing different aspects of the complete impasse reached by the economic system that they both defend: the capitalist mode of production. This is not new and it is certainly not limited to Britain.

The great slump of the 1930s was the first demonstration, on the economic level, that the capitalist system had become an obstacle to social progress: its inherent tendency towards overproduction had created the absurdity of generalised poverty and unemployment despite, and even because of, its enormous productive potential, and this was not a temporary glitch but a genuine crisis of old age, dragging the world into the huge destruction of the Second World War. In the wake of the war the world bourgeoisie recognised that there was no going back to relying on the ‘hidden hand of the market' to restore the economy to health, and it never again abandoned the ‘supportive action' of the state to keep the economy in motion. This was the hey-day of Keynesian polices: in all countries, the resort to debt and state spending was a crucial factor in the post-war economic boom.

But when the world economic crisis resurfaced at the end of the 1960s, to a considerable extent in the form of currency devaluations and inflation, it became clear that ‘supporting' the economy through permanent state intervention also had its down side. And over the past four decades the economic arguments have swung back and forth between ‘Thatcherites' and ‘neo-liberals' on the one hand, warning about the need to slim down the burden of state expenditure, and on the other hand the heirs of Keynes who have argued that such cuts can only revive the 1930s spectre of depression and mass unemployment. This same old argument is being played out by Cameron and Brown today.

In short: capitalism is caught in a cleft stick: if it goes on relying on massive levels of debt and state spending, it heads towards galloping inflation, financial melt-downs - and in the end, the seizing up of the economic machine. But if it makes the massive and immediate cuts demanded by its burden of debt, it ends up in the same place only faster.

Of course things are never so clear cut as in a politician's press conference. Brown and New Labour are no strangers to cuts in public spending and have already accepted that the next Labour government will indeed have to make huge inroads on expenditure on health, education, pensions and the rest. They only differ from the Tories in the pace and choice of cuts to be made (see WR 330, ‘2010: workers face sweeping cuts'). And the Tories, for all their hymns to free enterprise and a smaller state, have never hesitated to use the state machine to bolster up the decrepit capitalist economy, whether through outright nationalisations or more subtle forms of supervision and control.

What is certain is that, whichever party wins the next election, they will loyally serve the dictates of the capitalist economy, which, in a time of crisis, can only mean increasing attacks on the living conditions of the working class, through wage freezes, cuts in welfare benefits, and spiralling unemployment.  

Amos 29/1/10

It is guesswork, but the figures are so far: 200,000 dead, one-and-a-half million homeless, hundreds of thousands of orphans. Just a few days ago, three weeks after the quake, the UN said that it was "still far short" of providing food and water to those who need it. There are now around 20,000 US soldiers in Haiti or offshore, billeted, fed and provisioned. Most onshore are carrying heavy machine guns and grenades with the occasional small box marked "aid" for the TV cameras. In controlling the airport, the US army has prevented massive amounts of help from landing and being distributed. Last week, the US stopped planes from flying out the critically injured for four days at least. This is an operation undertaken not on behalf of the Haitian masses but of US imperialism. The CIA is probably already involved building up its local gangsters once again.

All the usual suspects of the "international community" are involved but it is America that is stamping its feet on the grounds of this misery in order to defend its imperialist interests against all and any rivals who might want to exert their influence. This sickening response by the US also shows the seamless continuity of the Clinton/Bush/Obama administrations in the interests of US imperialism, and particularly the wretched hollowness of Obama.

The general tone of the British media was "security". Just like New Orleans the hurt and damaged masses were seen as a threat.  The BBC news vied with Sky to play this up with a reporter giving warnings of violence and "insecurity" over an image that clearly showed laughing young men flattening cardboard boxes to help people make some sort of shelter. It was all about to kick off according to the BBC and its supine reporters and this explained the woeful lack of assistance. Dr. Evan Lyon of a medical aid group which had been working up to 3am every morning in the heart of the capital where reporters feared to tread, said on January 20th: "There's no US military presence, no UN guards, no Haitian police, no violence and no insecurity". Indeed, for the great part, the Haitian masses, even amongst the devastation, showed great spirit, mutual aid and self-organisation (just like in New Orleans and almost every other major disaster) up to the point of organising committees and patrols in Port-au-Prince to keep criminal elements out.

But it's not all bad news; James Dobbins, Clinton's envoy to Haiti said that "This disaster is an opportunity to accelerate oft-delayed reforms". What he means is US imperialism picking up what's left for its own profit. And more good news: while food and medical aid was being turned away by US military control of the airport, a plane-load of Scientologists landed with their healing hands. The Mormons also came, and then the Baptists, who, with the help of the US military, rounded up and abducted who knows how many "orphans", in an operation reminiscent of South American military juntas. Given the modern history of child abuse by the Christian churches and the US/Haitian connections in people trafficking, it's not surprising that the Baptists thought that they could just scoop up dozens of children, without a change of clothes and anything to eat, and spirit them away into God knows what. What's also shown here is the connection between US imperialism and Christian fundamentalism.

"Rebuilding" Haiti is a sick joke. All that will be rebuilt is the security forces, some symbolic structures and what's profitable to the US. Proper rebuilding to protect the masses will not take place because it is not profitable for capitalism. The same will apply to whole swathes of the Caribbean likely to be hit by the continuing subduction where millions more are at risk (of the 600,000 killed by earthquakes in the last ten years, 99% have been killed in urban sprawls).

Aid as imperialism

"Aid" is another lie that is also part of any imperialist strategy. We've seen it in Britain regarding British "aid" to Palestine, which ignores the plight and basic wants of the poor and is mainly directed to building up the security forces. US General Colin Powell said that NGO's were the "force multipliers for the US government". They are sometimes set up, used or infiltrated by the intelligence services. Already groaning under IMF debt, the loans given to Haiti by governments will have to be paid back with interest (while donations freely given go to pay for overpriced goods and services). A recent UN account of 21 disasters over the last 20 years show "a 25% increase in their external debt as a result of aid". In such situations what services there are will be cut and taxes and energy prices will go up in order to pay back the loans.

The poor of Haiti have been remorselessly attacked and abused by the "international community" and particularly the USA. The extent of this disaster shows capitalism's responsibility for it and its total incapacity to be able to deal with its aftermath because profits are its key. This is one of the greatest disasters of our time and our solidarity must go to the Haitian masses.

Baboon 5/2/10.

Sometimes we meet people who are concerned that, faced with enormous attacks on its living standards, the working class response is nowhere near the level needed to resist them. This is an understandable concern but we need to approach the question from a different angle. For a start we have to consider the class struggle on an international scale, and if we look around the world we can see many example of open and sometimes massive reactions by workers (see the articles on Turkey [9], Greece [10] and Algeria [11] in this issue for example). But even if we restrict our horizon to the UK, over the last few months we have seen a good deal of discontent among workers in many different sectors and industries facing attacks on pay, pensions, hours and conditions and redundancies - bus drivers in London, Leeds, Rotherham, health service workers in North Devon, London Underground electricians, workers at Fujitsu, South Yorkshire firemen etc. And before that the postal workers' strikes, several strikes in colleges, such as Tower Hamlets. And now Unite is balloting BA cabin crew - again - and the PCS balloting civil servants about strike action.

It takes courage to fight back today

The train of rising unemployment, underemployment, debt, and increased workloads set in motion by the economic crisis  certainly demands a response from those facing these attacks, particularly as we know there will be worse to come over the next few years, as much as capitalism can get away with. But in the context of such an open crisis, it can also be harder to struggle, particularly as the bosses can use the threat of unemployment as blackmail against workers, as we saw with postal workers last year and BA workers since December.

When BA cabin crew voted 90% in favour of strike action at the end of last year they did so knowing that the airline is under financial pressure: earlier in the recession it appealed for its employees to work for free one month; they have seen other airlines go into administration, and they know redundancies are coming. In fact it was precisely the fact that over 800 of the workers who voted in the first ballot had been made redundant that gave BA the legal excuse to challenge that ballot.

Civil servants are being balloted by the PCS for strike action against the loss of redundancy protection and compensation terms. It is an open secret that whoever wins the next election will impose cuts in government spending and job losses in the civil service.

Workers face many other difficulties in struggling today. The economic crisis makes bosses more desperate, more intransigent, more bullying. Then there is the law which is used to intimidate workers, and provide an alibi for the unions.

Class struggle is against the law

The injunction against the strike of BA cabin crew called for 12 days over Christmas and New Year, as well as a similar injunction by First London buses, overturning massive votes in favour of action, have led to complaints that "Trade union rights have never been more under threat in this country" (Martin Mayer, Chair of United Left, on libcom.org). In fact Unite has done very well out of the injunction: it has been able to appear very militant while calling off any action.

But injunctions are not the only way the law affects the class struggle. First of all for a strike to be legal there has to be a ballot and notice given to employers. This doesn't threaten the unions but strengthens them while weakening the position of the workers who face long drawn out negotiations, repeated ballots, action called on and off as a walk-on part ‘to force the bosses to negotiate'. Whether in BA or Royal Mail this simply shows the control the union has over the workers.

Then there is the ban on ‘secondary picketing'. This does not threaten the unions either, since they base themselves on negotiation with specific employers. In fact it strengthens them against their members, workers who need to spread their struggles if they are to impose a favourable relation of force. This complements the state policy of breaking up industries into multiple ‘provider' franchises - for instance it would be illegal to link up struggles by bus drivers not only in Leeds and Rotherham, but also in First London and CT Plus in the same city. A situation so ridiculous that Unite is campaigning for a single pay scale for bus drivers across London - allowing the union to appear to want to link these workers without any real links in struggle.

The fact is that when workers are able to go into struggle without ballots, without giving statutory notice to bosses, when they can turn the sympathy of other workers into an extension of the strike to those workers, then they are much more powerful, much more likely to win concessions. The Lindsey strikes a year ago and last June demonstrated that, ending with the announcement of new jobs. What has prevented those strikes being a beacon for the working class today, in the way the Tekel strike is in Turkey, is the difficulty they had with the divisions imposed between British workers employed by British contractors and foreign workers employed by foreign contractors, feeding illusions in nationalism - although these divisions were beginning to be addressed at the end, with appeals to Italian workers for example.

Scab unions?

Those who peddle the notion that unions are the way to defend workers' interests are getting upset at BA setting up the Professional Cabin Crew Council as a ‘scab union' alternative to Bassa (Unite), and also that the pilots' union has declared itself ‘neutral' on the issue of BA training other staff to replace stewards in the event of a strike. Yet "Unite's alternative proposal, "The Way Forward", agrees to allow new crew to work on different pay and conditions. It also agrees to a two-year pay freeze" (https://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=20113 [12]). Just like the CWU which called off the postal strikes last year in favour on negotiations on how to bring in the Royal Mail modernisation programme (job losses and increased workloads), Unite is also working to bring in management's cuts in a controlled and negotiated way, a way that won't risk too much resistance. That's what unions are there for.

Alex  5/2/10

The Chilcot Inquiry is now the 5th inquiry linked to the Iraq War. Six years after the invasion and despite the withdrawal of British forces, the conflict continues to haunt the British ruling class.

This is not surprising, for the Iraq War has been a disaster for the British bourgeoisie. From the start, they were divided over whether to participate in the American misadventure which led to destabilising faction battles. The swift crushing of Saddam's regime was then followed by a long and costly occupation which ended in defeat and humiliation as British troops were increasingly regarded as irrelevant both by the Iraqi government and the local militias. British military weakness has been exposed to the world and its close ties to the Bush administration have left it diplomatically marginalised.

At home, there has been extreme disquiet over the war within the mass of the population. Not only were the lies and distortions of Blair and Campbell exposed almost as soon as they left their offices, the war triggered some of the biggest demonstrations in history. Blair - who in other respects had been an extremely successful prime minister for British capitalism - was permanently damaged by the accusations of deceit.

No wonder, then, that the ruling class wants to learn lessons from the debacle! So we can believe Gordon Brown when he announced to the House of Commons that the aim of the Chilcot Inquiry would be to "strengthen the health of our democracy, our diplomacy and our military" (15.6.09).

Certainly the bourgeoisie aims to recover ground on all three of these terrains but it is on the democratic terrain that they are hoping to make the most impact. After all, airing (some) of their dirty laundry in public reinforces the idea that despite all the "errors" made by this or that politician, in the end the system is democratic.

But the reality is that capitalist states do not wage wars ‘democratically'. Initiating war is decided on the basis of the strategic interests of the national capital and such decisions are taken in the highest echelons of the state machine.

The masses are not consulted in this process - in fact, it is largely acknowledged by military planners that one of the biggest obstacles to military operations is the reluctance of the domestic population. An integral aspect to so-called "information dominance" is convincing the masses to support the actions of the state. This is the reason for the Blair faction's overproduction of "dodgy dossiers" and open prevarication in the run-up to the war.

If these lies were so quickly exposed in some parts of the media, this was simply because the British bourgeoisie wasn't unified in its support for the war. And, indeed, this is part of the issue that the numerous inquiries seek to address: the way that the Blair faction's foreign policy was increasingly detached from the general interests of the state and ruling class as a whole. The internal conflict has done serious damage to the state's future capacity to mislead a population that now regards the ruling class' justifications for humanitarian war with a new cynicism.

Whatever Blair's failures in the eyes of his capitalist compatriots, he continues to provide loyal service to the bourgeois state. His unrepentant and provocative testimony feeds the highly personalised presentation of the war as some kind peculiarity linked to Blair's supposed Manichean vision of good and evil. It is thus "Blair's War", not the war of the British capitalist state and certainly not of capitalism as a whole.

Workers cannot allow themselves to be hoodwinked by this ideological assault. War is the inevitable product of decaying capitalism and the inexorable pressure of competition between nation states. It can only be fought by tackling its root cause: the capitalist profit system itself.

Ishamael 2/2/10

When Britain welcomed Saddam's brutality

Saddam Hussein took power in 1979 in "what the British ambassador described as ‘the first smooth transfer of power in Iraq since 1958', when a group of army officers overthrew the monarchy.

The ambassador noted, however, what this ‘smooth transfer' had involved. Within the first 24 hours of Saddam's rule, ‘21 prominent Iraqis, including five members of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, executed'.

Britain was confident in Saddam's ability to crush dissent. ‘Strong-arm methods may be needed to steady the ship' wrote a Foreign Office official. ‘Saddam will not flinch'." (FT 30.12.09)

In early December, when Gordon Brown said that Tory plans for inheritance tax had been dreamt up "on the playing fields of Eton" David Cameron knew what he had to do. He pointed out that "I never hide my background" but "if they want to fight a class war, fine, go for it."

With a general election due in the next few months it's time for the political parties to try and look as though they offer alternative approaches to the running of the capitalist economy and its state machine. It's all propaganda to make it look as though there's some sort of choice on offer between the different competing teams.

The ‘class war' language is not very fierce in the hands of Labour and its left-wing supporters, but it has succeeded in convincing a third of voters that the Tories are the party of the ‘upper classes'.

In this campaign you get Ken Livingstone (Guardian 28/1/10) say of a future Tory government that "Those on average incomes, the least well-off, the unemployed, teachers, health workers and others must suffer the effects of a savage attack on social and public spending....These are the real open class-war policies". To his right David Miliband (on the Andrew Marr Show 24/1/10) declared that changes to inheritance tax will bring the "biggest redistribution of wealth to the wealthy in two generations." From his left Socialist Worker (16/1/10) can see that "behind the Eton toff's smiles is the real, vicious face of the Tories".

The trouble with such rhetoric is that for it to have an impact we have to forgot what's happened during the 13 years of the Blair/Brown regime, one that's been in office for twice as long as any previous Labour government.

Livingstone talks of the effects of policies on the unemployed or least well-off and describes them as "open class-war policies" - as though they were something exceptionally terrible in a Tory future. In reality attacks on the conditions of work and life of the working class have been undertaken throughout the life of the Labour government, in continuity with its Tory predecessor, as well as with any future governing team.

Because Labour retained most of the Tory manipulations of statistics (and added some of their own) it's difficult to know exactly how many million people are out of work in the UK. But this is clearly an area where the working class has been seriously hit and, whatever the official figures, the situation is every bit as bad, if not worse, than under Thatcher in the early 80s. Official statistics put unemployment at about 7.8%, but the official rate for ‘underemployment' (that is those who want to work longer hours, obviously for the money, not for the good of their health) has risen to nearly 10%.

The British economy shrank by nearly 5% in 2009, the worst drop since the 1920s, and it's the working class that has had to pay the price. Officially 1.3 million people lost their jobs in the current recession, and those who have returned to work have typically taken a 30% drop in income. In 2009 10 million people had their pay cut, frozen or got a rise that was below the inflation rate. According to various estimates: 1.7 million people were not made redundant because they took pay cuts or were prepared to work part time; more than a million people are working part time who explicitly want full time work. As for what is to come, 6 million public sector workers face effective pay freezes for the foreseeable future because of Labour measures. A ‘think-tank' has proposed that the middle-aged are left to fester on the dole as it's more important to try and find jobs for younger workers. Suicides are on the rise. Mental health co-ordinators are being introduced into Job Centres who will be able to recommend the quick fix therapy of CBT without a doctor's referral.

The working class is suffering from capitalism's crisis, yet more than 90% of bankers' mega-bonuses still get paid. The gap between the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor is much the same as it was 60 years ago. The class struggle exists because different classes have opposing interests. As communists we are open about defending the interests of the exploited class; but both the Tories and Labour (and its left wing hangers on) have long ago proved that in this war, they are firmly in the camp of the ruling class.

Car 2/2/10

One year ago, there were three weeks of massive struggles in the streets of Greece over the police murder of a young anarchist, Alexandros Grigoropoulos. But the movement on the street and in the schools and universities had great difficulty linking up with the struggles in the workplace. There was only one strike, that of primary school teachers for one morning, in support of the movement, even though this was a time of massive labour unrest, including a general strike, and the links still couldn't be made.

However, in Greece the workers' actions have continued beyond the end of the protest movement up until today. Indeed Labour Minister, Andreas Lomberdos, has been warning that the measures needed to lift the national debt crisis that is threatening to kick Greece out of the euro-zone might result in bloodshed. The new Socialist government is talking of uniting all of the bourgeois parties and is seeking to forge an emergency national unity government that will be able to suspend articles of the constitution protecting the right to public assembly, demonstration and strike.

Even before the government announced its ‘reforms' (read attacks on the working class) to reduce the budget deficit from 12.7% to 2.8% by 2012, there was a large wave of workers' struggles. There have been strikes of dockworkers, Telecom workers, dustbin men, doctors, nurses, kindergarten and primary school teachers, taxi drivers, steel workers, and municipal workers, all for what seems like separate reasons but actually all in response to attacks that the state and capital has already been forced to make to try to make workers pay for the crisis.

Before the austerity package was put forward (and approved by the EU) Prime Minister Papandreou warned that it would be "painful." And on 29 January, before any details were announced, in response to the existing "stability programme" there was an angry demonstration by firefighters and other public sector workers in Athens.

The government's 3- year plan included a comprehensive wage freeze for public sector workers and a 10% reduction in allowances. Estimates put this as equivalent to a pay cut of anything from 5-15%. Retiring government workers will not be replaced, but there is also the prospect of the age of retirement being raised as a way for the state to save on pension costs.

The fact that the state is now being forced to implement even more severe attacks against an already combative working class show the depths to which the crisis has effected Greece. Minister Lomberdos spelled it out very clearly when he said that these measures "can only be implemented in a violent way". However, attacks made against all sectors of workers at the same time open up the real possibility for workers to make a common struggle over joint demands.

If you examine carefully what the unions in Greece have been doing you can see that their actions are keeping the struggles divided. On 4/5 February there was a 48-hour official strike by customs officers and tax officials that shut down ports and border crossing points, while some farmers were still maintaining their blockades. The Independent (5/2/10) headlined "Strikes bring Greece to its knees" and described the action as the "first of an expected rash of rowdy strikes"

This ‘expected rash' of strikes involves plans for a public sector strike and march to parliament to protest against the attacks on pensions by the Adedy union on 10 February ; a strike called by PAME, the Stalinist union, on 11 February; and a private sector strike by the GSEE, the largest union, representing 2 million workers, on 24 February.

Divided in this way the working class is not going to bring the Greek state to its knees. The Financial Times (5/2/10) thought that up to now the "unions have reacted mildly to the government's austerity plans, reflecting a mood of willingness to make sacrifices to overcome the economic crisis" but identified "a growing union backlash against the government's austerity programme." In reality the unions have not neglected their support for the Socialist government, but, with the growing anger being expressed by the working class, they know that if they don't stage some actions then there is the possibility that workers will begin to see through the union charade. At the moment the unions have put on their radical face, broken off dialogue on future plans for pensions and scheduled one and two day strikes on a variety of dates. The unions were indeed willing for workers to make sacrifices, but now they have to take account of the backlash from the working class.

For workers, in the future development of their struggles, there is a need to be wary not only of the unions but of other ‘false friends.' The KKE (Greek Communist Party), for example, which does have some influence in the working class, was, a year ago, calling protesters secret agents of ‘dark foreign forces', and ‘provocateurs'. Now they say that ‘workers and farmers have the right to resort to any means of struggle to defend their rights'. Should they return to their old tune there are other left-wing forces like the Trotskyists who will be there to rally workers against fascists or other right wingers, or against the influence of American imperialism - for anything except workers moving towards taking their struggles into their own hands. With strikes in neighbouring Turkey happening at the same time as strikes in Greece, the unions and their allies will be particularly concerned that all the problems facing workers are portrayed as being specifically Greek, and not affecting workers internationally.

One thing that is distinctive about the situation in Greece has been the proliferation of various armed groups that bomb public buildings but, in the process, create little more than a flaming alternative to mainstream spectacles, while encouraging further state repression. These groups, with exotic names like the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, Guerrilla Group of Terrorists or the Nihilist Faction, offer nothing to the working class. Workers build class solidarity, consciousness, and confidence through taking part in their own struggles, and developing their own forms of organisation, not through sitting at home and watching bombs set by leftist radicals on TV. The sound of a workers' mass meeting discussing how to organise their own struggle scares the ruling class more than a thousands bombs.   

DD (updated by WR 5/2/10)

Throughout January there have been numerous strikes and street demonstrations in Algeria[1]. Aware that this might be a ‘bad example' and stimulate reflection in a part of the proletariat, especially among immigrant workers who can't help but be affected by these experiences, the French bourgeoisie has given very little media attention to all this.

Demonstrations by unemployed workers in Annaba in east Algeria, by the homeless or badly housed in a whole series of places, workers' strikes in Oran, Mostaganem, Constantine and especially in the industrial suburbs of Algiers, where there was an important level of protest - all this has been subject to the black-out. With the brutal acceleration of the economic crisis, bringing inflation, declining purchasing power and various other attacks, the working class, which has been weakened in recent years, has once again raised its head. There has been a real surge in workers' anger in numerous regions, above all in the heart of the industrial sector. The zone of Rouiba, an industrial suburb to the east of Algiers, seems to have been in the limelight. Everyone remembers that this is where the so-called ‘Semolina revolt' of 1988 broke out[2]. But unlike the latter, which was a rebellion by a starving general population, a revolt of the non-exploiting strata, this time we saw a more specific mobilisation of the proletariat, with its own demands, demands which have always belonged to the workers' movement: for wages, for pensions, against lay-offs.

The workers of the SNVI (Societé Nationale des Véhicules Industriels, formerly SONACOM) were the first to enter the fray. At the end of 2009 the government decided to end the opportunity for its employees to retire early, an undertaking introduced in 1998. In response, the strike spread like wildfire, hitting both public sector and private sector enterprises, with over 10,000 out on strike. Workers at Mobsco, Cameg, Hydroaménagement, ENAD, Baticim and other companies joined the struggle out of solidarity with their class brothers. The workers then confronted major anti-riot police forces in the centre of the town, where the unions had led them[3].

Parallel to these struggles in the capital, on the back of endless and tumultuous revolts by the young jobless, 7,200 workers from the steel complex at Arcelor Mittal in El Hadjar, Annaba, 600 km east of Algiers, came out on strike against the planned closure of the coking plant and the suppression of 320 jobs. Faced with the hardening of a ‘general, and unlimited' strike, and with the evident determination of the workers, the bosses applied to have the strike declared illegal. Here the UGTA union federation was a very useful auxiliary in sabotaging the movement, calling on the workers to go back to work and accept at face value the bosses' promises to invest in the rehabilitation of the coking plant. The reality is that such cuts are inevitable and the idea of rehabilitating the plant is a smokescreen. The trade unions can't say this though!

This social ferment once again shows the growing militancy of workers around the world.   WH 23/1/10

[1]               Sources: https://www.prs12.com/spip.php?article11934 [20], www.mico.over-blog.org [21], https://www.afrik.com/article18531.html [22] and also the newspaper El Vatan.

[2]               In 1988 the ‘Semolina revolt' broke out in response to a brutal rise in basic foodstuffs. It was suppressed by the army at a cost of more than 500 dead. See Révolution Internationale no 314

[3]               Following these events, which came after the new tripartite agreement (government, bosses and union) which codified the latest attacks, the boss of the UGTA was denounced as a ‘sell out'.

"At the next election millions will vote for pro-capitalist political parties that offer little except cutbacks and austerity. Despite economic crisis, climate chaos and disastrous wars, people see no alternative to capitalism - and revolution seems, at best, an impossible dream. Yet all three speakers at this debate believe this situation cannot last indefinitely. Their differing interpretations of anthropology, economics and history each show that a 21st Century global revolution is a real possibility - not just a dream. Could they be right? Come and join the debate."

This was part of the flyer for the meeting on ‘The (im)possibility of revolution?' held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London on 21st January. The fact that the meeting drew around 100 people is a manifestation of the fact that a growing minority in society is once again asking serious questions about the future being offered to us by the capitalist system. It was addressed by three speakers: the anthropologist Chris Knight; William Dixon, a professor of economics and former member of the old Radical Chains group; and Hillel Ticktin, a Professor of Marxist Studies in Glasgow and editor of the sophisticated leftist journal Critique.

All three presentations made interesting listening. We have previously written about Chris Knight's anthropological theories, centred round the hypothesis that a key element in the emergence of modern human beings was the collective refusal of females to submit to the domination of alpha males, initiating a "human revolution" which installed a truly communal distribution of the products of the hunt. Since the development of our human nature is directly linked to the appearance of primitive communism there is a real potential for mankind restoring, on a higher level, a communist way of living[1].

Both Dixon and Ticktin, examining the history of capitalism in the light of the recent plunge into open economic crisis, put forward the argument that capitalism was signalling its own end. Ticktin in particular insisted that the perspective of the decline of capitalism has always been an integral component of marxism - and that today capitalism is not only in decline but is already showing signs of disintegration, a wearing out of all the traditional means of prolonging its senile existence (finance capital, social democratic reformism, etc). As already mentioned, Ticktin edits a leftist journal and for years he has been a defender of the essentially Trotskyist view that the Stalinist regimes are not capitalist. But it is still significant that the deepening of the crisis is leading him to elaborate a version of the theory of capitalist decline, which is a foundation stone for the advocacy of revolutionary class positions.     

Numerous questions and comments were made by those who had come to the meeting. Someone asked why there had not been more working class resistance in the wake of the credit crunch. Another whether the "Bolivarian revolution" in Venezuela offers us a way forward. Another whether capitalism could go green. Unfortunately, there was little possibility of developing any of these questions. The meeting lasted approximately 2 hours. Each speaker was given about 20 minutes to present their positions, thus accounting for the first hour, there was then about 30 minutes for participants to ask questions and make comments ... followed by another 30 minutes for the speakers to respond to what had been said. In such an atmosphere it is extremely difficult for a debate to actually develop. Unsurprisingly, most comments were not followed up or really taken any notice of, but had the feeling of just being individual responses to the presentations. 

The shame of it is that this kind of meeting exactly appeals to the kinds of questions that are increasingly being asked by more and more people: What does the present economic crisis mean? What would a future society look like? And how the study of anthropology is able to help us to understand not just past societies but also key aspects of a future one - the issue of solidarity, how to live in harmony with our environment, etc.

However the elephant in the room was the question of how we are to bring about the revolution which was the topic under discussion. In this respect, the limits of the academic approach - albeit an approach which is able to offer many detailed and even profound contributions to historical research - became apparent. People can come to such a meeting and passively listen to ‘experts' giving presentations and responding to questions, without posing the question of militant political engagement, the recognition that capitalism begins to be challenged above all through the conscious, collective action of workers  and through the participation of revolutionary organisations within that action. Debate and discussion are the lifeblood of revolutionary organisations and the working class struggle generally. However, it is the framework in which such debates are held that determines their effectiveness in helping the development of consciousness. 

Graham 05/02/10

[1]. https://en.internationalism.org/2008/10/Chris-Knight [25]

Barack Obama's war against America's ‘mortal enemy', al Qaida, is growing in scale. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq have already been drawn into this battle to ‘defend civilisation'. We now have to add Yemen, Somalia and, to a lesser degree, Subsaharan Africa, all of which have also been the scene of ‘targeted raids' and other incursions. Meanwhile the policy of the ‘open hand' towards Iran, announced at the beginning of Obama's presidency and geared towards a diplomatic approach to Iran's nuclear ambitions, is now once again giving way to the clenched fist :

"The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to four countries - Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait - and keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down Iranian missiles. Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia develop a force to protect its oil installations.

American officials said the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran and reassuring Gulf states fearful that Tehran might react to sanctions by striking at US allies in the region. Washington is also seeking to discourage Israel from a strike against Iran by demonstrating that the US is prepared to contain any threat" (Guardian 1/2/10).

The USA, already completely bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, is thus continuing its headlong plunge into war by stepping up its military presence in this entire region.

The strategic importance of Yemen and Somalia

A simple question is posed: what interest do these two countries represent for American imperialism? Yemen, with its very meagre oil resources, has become a real desert, ravaged by years of war. In 1990, the Arab republic of North Yemen and the Popular Democratic Republic of South Yemen got together to form the Republic of Yemen. Since then there has been non-stop war. The Yemeni population of 21 million is one of the poorest in the world. The country is on the verge of cracking up.

As for Somalia, the situation is even worse. This country of 9 million inhabitants is a vast killing field. War has been raging for more than 20 years. The population is in almost permanent flight from all kinds of armed gangs and desperate for shelter and food. The last government to date doesn't even control the whole of its capital city, Mogadishu. The so-called transition government is locked in a conflict with the Islamist groups: Hizbul Islam, led by Sheikh Aweys, a former mentor of the current president; and the al-Shabab group which is linked to al-Qaida. In the regions of Somaliland and Puntland, the search for any semblance of order and stability has been totally abandoned. The fishermen of the coast have turned to piracy to survive, the seas there having been infested by nuclear waste from various European naval ships. Since the collapse of the government in 1990, the USA has been in military occupation of part of the terrain. This was pushed through by the ‘Restore Hope' operation in 1992. This was also the time when France's Bernard Kouchner arrived in Somalia carrying sacks of rice on his shoulder, discretely followed by some French army contingents!

But what is of such interest to imperialist predators like the USA and many others? To respond to this question, you only need to look at a map. Between Somalia and Yemen lies the Gulf of Aden, which is the maritime route towards the Red Sea and the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. The Straits of Ormuz are therefore one of the most surveillanced and coveted areas in the world. More than 20% of the world's oil supplies and more than half the world's oil tankers go through this route. This is also the route through which Chinese imperialism, which is becoming more and more aggressive, is infiltrating towards Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. In this period of deep economic crisis and sharpening imperialist tensions, controlling the supplies of black gold and the main maritime routes is indispensible for any imperialist power that wants to play a world role. It is a vital weapon of war.

This is why the failed attempt to blow up an American passenger plane heading to Detroit from Amsterdam, carried out on Christmas Day by the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in the name of al-Qaida, has made it possible to reopen the Pandora's Box of the struggle against terrorism. The fact that this young Nigerian had stayed in Yemen and had been trained there by al-Qaida was the perfect pretext. The reaction was swift. "Washington and London expressed their will to cooperate further in the anti-terrorist struggle in Yemen and Somalia. London and Washington envisage financing a special unit of anti-terrorist police in Yemen and giving added support to the Yemeni coast guard, Downing Street said" (Jeune Afrique, 26/1/0). French imperialism didn't want to be left out and immediately made the same kind of declaration. The president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah, has been in power for 30 years and is an ally of the US. The American army has already sent him missiles and special troops. With the Houti guerrillas in the north being supported by Iran, war is raging, for example round the town of Sa'dah. In a country in such a state of instability, only a direct military presence can serve the needs of a major power. A new American base was already set up there last year, under the banner of anti-terrorism, and the arrival of extra US troops, who will be facing rebellions in both the North and the South of the country, is yet another step by US imperialism into a quagmire with no escape, as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Iran problem and the accelerating decline of US leadership

The recent deployment of tens of thousands of extra US troops in Afghanistan shows very clearly that America is not capable of winning this war. The fact that Pakistan is one of the major prizes in this conflict has resulted in the destabilisation of the Islamabad government, its army and its national unity in a region where Indian and Chinese imperialism are also very active. But although the US is being strongly challenged by China, it has also been reduced to asking it, as well as Russia, for help in dealing with the growing ambitions of Iran, which has been strengthened by the destruction of the Saddam regime in Iraq and which is seeking to extend its influence into Lebanon, southern Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere, as well as taking steps towards equipping itself with a nuclear arsenal : "Two high US officials went to China before the presidential visit and warned the Chinese that if they didn't support Washington over the Iranian dossier, Israel would go onto the attack, provoking chaos in the oil supplies which are so vital to China. Iran is the country's second biggest oil supplier and Chinese enterprises have invested massively there. To loosen this constraint, the USA also proposed that the Chinese should reduce their dependence of Iranian supplies. The Americans' proposals seem to have been listened to. For the first time in a number of years, China voted in favour of the International Atomic Agency condemning Iran" (J Pomfret and J Warrick of the Washington Post, Counter Info 27/1/09). Russia is thus also being courted by the US, which needs their help: this is why they suspended their programme of installing missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. But Russia and China both have good reasons to continue encouraging Tehran's destabilising role in the Middle East.

These appeals for help are also a real admission of weakness. After the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001, George Bush Jnr launched the USA into a war campaign, striking out almost alone in a bid to demonstrate the absolute military supremacy of the world's leading power. This whole campaign has been a failure. But the ‘new' Obama policy, which uses different language but which is just as warlike, won't produce anything better, either for American imperialism or, obviously, for humanity.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, and now Somalia and Yemen, the war waged in the name of the struggle against radical Islamism is expanding. Each blood-stained step forward by American imperialism exposes its growing powerlessness. In Afghanistan, the USA's inability to defeat the Taliban has become increasingly evident, with mounting calls to negotiate with its more ‘moderate' elements. In Iraq, bomb outrages continue non-stop, the most recent being a deadly suicide bombing of a Shia religious procession at the end of January, leaving sores of dead and maimed. For the USA, Yemen can only be a new Iraq or a new Afghanistan. For the population of these countries, the worst is yet to come. Imperialism in decay sows death wherever it goes. For the working class of all countries, whether or not directly affected, this reality is increasingly evident and intolerable.  

A/Rossi 27/1/10

Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, France, Germany, Britain...everywhere the same crisis, everywhere the same attacks. The ruling class is revealing its true colours. Its cold and inhuman language boils down to the same basic message: ‘if you want to avoid the worst, if you don't want total economic break-down, you are going to have to pull in your belts like never before'. Obviously not all the capitalist states are in the same situation of uncontrollable deficit and cessation of payment, but all know that they are heading inexorably in that direction. And all of them make use of this reality to defend their sordid interests. Where are they going to find the money to make at least a small dent in the monstrous deficits? You don't have to look far. While some of them have already launched the offensive against the working class, all of them are at least preparing the ground ideologically.

Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain: a foretaste of what is in store for the whole working class

The Greek austerity plan aimed at reducing public debt is both cynical and brutal. The country's finance minister said that "the civil servants must show their patriotism and give an example". In other words they must accept without question a cut in their wages and the removal of benefits; they must put up with the fact that posts made vacant by retirement won't be replaced, that the retirement age is pushed beyond 65 and that they can be made redundant and thrown away like used kleenex. All to defend the national economy, which belongs to the exploiter's state, the bosses and all those who suck the workers' blood. All the national bourgeoisies of Europe are playing an active part in this drastic austerity plan. Germany, France, Britain and Spain are all paying close attention to the policies being put into place by the Greek state. They want the following message to be broadcast to the proletariat on an international scale: 'look at Greece: its people are forced to accept sacrifices to save the economy. You are going to have to do the same thing yourselves'.

First it was the households of America, then the banks, then the big companies, now the state itself is faced with bankruptcy. Its response: orchestrate pitiless attacks on living standards. In the months ahead there will be a draconian reduction of public sector workers' jobs - in Britain they are already talking about 250,000 local government jobs going, and that's even before the elections have been got out of the way. These cuts will of course impact severely on everyone's living standards. For the bourgeoisie, the workers are like cattle who they can take to the slaughterhouse when their interests dictate it. The situation is identical in Portugal, Ireland, and Spain: the same savage plans, the same catalogue of anti-working class measures. And it's not just in Europe. In the most powerful country in the world, the USA, unemployment stands at 17%; 20 million people have joined the ranks of the ‘poor' and 35 million survive thanks to food vouchers. And every day that passes brings a further dive into misery.

States faced with their own insolvency

How did we get to this? For the bourgeoisie as a whole, and especially its left wing fractions, the response is very simple. It's all the fault of the bankers and mastodons like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan etc. It's true that the financial system has gone mad. It can see nothing beyond its immediate interests - it's the old ‘after me, the deluge' approach. It's now known that it was the big banks which, in order to get more money, accelerated Greece's cessation of payments and bet on its bankruptcy. They will no doubt do the same thing tomorrow with Portugal or Spain. The great world banks and financial instructions are indeed a bunch of crooks. But these ultimately suicidal policies of the world of high finance are not the cause of the crisis of capitalism. On the contrary, they are its effects - which, at a certain stage, have become an aggravating factor in it.

As usual, the bourgeoisie of all stripes is lying to us. It is trying to create a vast smokescreen. And it is playing for high stakes. It has to do everything it can to prevent workers making the link between the growing insolvency of the banks and the bankruptcy of the entire capitalist system. Because that's the true state of affairs: capitalism is dying and the madness of its financial sphere is one of the symptoms.

When the crisis broke out with such a bang in the middle of 2007, the failure of the banking system was evident everywhere, especially in the USA. This situation was simply the product of decades of the policy of generalised debt, encouraged by the states themselves in order to create the markets needed to sell commodities. But when the individuals and companies could no longer repay their debts, the banks found themselves on the edge of collapse, and the capitalist economy with them. It was at this point that the states had to take over a large part of the debts of the private sector and come up with monumental and costly plans to try to limit the recession.

Now it's the states themselves which are in debt up to their necks, unable to cope and without having saved the private sector. They are staring bankruptcy in the face. Of course a state is not a company: when it can no longer pay its debts, it can't just lock the doors. It can go for more debt at higher rates of interest, print more paper money, dip into everyone's savings. But a time comes when the debts (or at least the interest on them) have to be paid back, even by a state. To understand this, we only have to look at what's happening now with the Greek, Portuguese, and even Spanish states. In Greece the state has tried to finance itself by borrowing on the international markets. The results of this are now with us. The whole world, knowing perfectly well that the Greece is insolvent, offered it very short term loans at rates of interest of over 8%. It goes without saying that that such an economic situation is insupportable. What solutions are left then? Equally short term loans from other states like Germany and France. But even if these states can temporarily put something into Greece's coffers, they won't then be able to bale out Portugal, then Spain, and maybe even Britain. They will never have enough liquidity. These policies could only end up crippling them financially. Even a country like the USA, which can count on the international domination of the dollar, is seeing its public deficit growing all the time. Half of all America's states are bankrupt. In California, the state government is no longer paying its public servants in dollars but with a kind of local money, vouchers which are only valid on Californian soil!

In short, there is no economic policy that can pull all these states out of their insolvency. In order to put things off, they have no choice but to make big cuts in their ‘expenses'. This is precisely what Greece is now doing, along with Portugal, Spain, and soon all the rest. These will not be like the austerity plans the working class has been through regularly since the end of the 1960s. Capitalism is going to have to make the working class pay very heavily for the survival of the system. The image we need to have in mind is that of the soup kitchens of the 1930s. This is the future that the crisis of capitalism is preparing for us. In the face of growing poverty, only the massive resistance of the world working class can open a perspective of a new society without exploitation, commodity production and profit, which are the real roots of today's economic crisis.  

Tino 3/3/10

The eyes of the world ruling class are on Greece today, not only because the failure of its economy is a harbinger of what lies in store for the rest of Europe, but above all because the bourgeoisie is well aware that the social situation in Greece is a real powder-keg.

In December 2008, the country was shaken by a month-long social uprising, led mainly by proletarian youth, following the police murder of a young anarchist. This year the austerity measures announced by the Socialist government - which include wage cuts for public sector workers, a delay in the retirement age and tax increases on alcohol and cigarettes - are threatening to ignite an explosion not only among the students and the unemployed but also the main battalions of the employed working class. It is thus of the utmost importance - for the bourgeoisie - to be able to provide examples of workers tamely accepting austerity measures ‘for the good of the economy'. Unfortunately for them, this is not exactly the scenario being played out in Greece at the moment.

In the two weeks leading up to the announcement of the government package, there had been a widely followed 24 hour general strike against the threatened austerity measures, a longer running strike by customs officials which paralysed exports and imports,  as well as actions by government employees, fishermen and others.

The events following the announcement of the package at the beginning of March showed even more clearly that there is a clear and present proletarian danger.

"Just hours after the announcement of the new measures, layed-off workers of Olympic Airways attacked riot police lines guarding the State General Accountancy and have occupied the building, in what they call a open-ended occupation. The action has led to the closing of Athens' main commercial street, Panepistimiou, for long hours.

On Thursday morning, workers under the Communist Party union umbrella PAME occupied the Ministry of Finance on Syntagma square (which remains under occupation) as well as the county headquarters of the city of Trikala. Later, PAME also occupied 4 TV station in the city in Patras, and the state TV station of Salonica, forcing the news broadcasters to play a DVD against government measures.

On Thursday afternoon, two protest marches took to the streets of Athens. The first, called by PAME, and the second by OLME, the teachers union and supported by ADEDY. The latter gathered around 10,000 people despite less than 24h notice, and during its course limited clashes developed with the riot police which was pilled [sic] with rocks outside the EU Commission building. Also two protest marches took to the streets of Salonica at the same time. A protest march was also realised in the city of Lamia.

Finally, the party offices of PASOK in the town of Arta were smashed by what it is believed to be people enraged by the measures" (from the blog by Taxikipali a regular contributor to libcom.org: https://libcom.org/news/mass-strikes-greece-response-new-measures-04032010 [38]).

Soon after these lines were written, another post by the same blogger wrote about the long running battles that broke out at the Athens demonstration following a police assault on Manolis Glezos, an icon of the anti-Nazi resistance during the war (https://libcom.org/news/long-battles-erupt-athens-protest-march-05032010 [39]). At the time of writing a whole number of further strikes and demonstrations have been planned.

Unions radicalise to keep control

In December 2008 the movement was largely spontaneous and often organised itself around general assemblies in the occupied schools and universities. The HQ of the Communist Party (KKE) union confederation was itself occupied, expressing a clear distrust of the Stalinist union apparatus which had frequently denounced the young protesters both as lumpen-proletarians and spoiled sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie.

Today however the KKE has shown that it is still a vital instrument of bourgeois rule by taking charge of the strikes, demonstrations and occupations. There has certainly been overt rage against the Socialist GSEE union, which is seen as a direct tool of the PASOK government: Panagopoulos, the boss of GSEE, an umbrella of private sector unions, was physically attacked at the demo and had to be rescued by the Presidential Guard, but so far the KKE and its unions have been able to present themselves as the leading and organising force of the movement.

The danger for the Greek bourgeoisie is that if the present mood of defiance continues, the workers will begin to see beyond this false radicalism, and that in seeking to take their struggles beyond the set-pieces imposed by the union machinery, workers will be compelled to take things into their own hands, adopting the ‘assemblyist' model which began to take shape in December 2008.

But even in its present stage, the struggle in Greece is a real worry for the international ruling class as a whole. Similar austerity measures in Spain, centred round a two years postponement of retirement age, provoked angry demonstrations in a number of cities, while in Portugal, on 4 March (the same day as the Athens demonstrations) hospitals, schools and transport were severely disrupted as public sector workers staged a 24-hour strike against a wage freeze and other austerity measures. The stoppage also hit courts, customs offices and refuse collections.

In France, there have been expressions of active militancy among teachers, railway workers, shop employees and oil workers. In the latter case, solidarity strikes spread from one refinery to another, and across different oil companies, after threats to close the Total refinery near Dunkirk.

In sum, the mood of fear and passivity which tended to reign when the economic crisis took a dramatic turn for the worse in 2008 is beginning to be replaced by one of indignation, as workers openly ask: why should we pay for capitalism's crisis?

Of course these stirrings of class consciousness can be and are being sidetracked into ideological dead ends, notably through the world-wide campaign to blame it all on the bankers or on ‘neo-liberalism'. In Greece, the fact that the German bourgeoisie was most pointed in its refusal to bale out the Greek economy led the PASOK government to play on the anti-German sentiments that still survive from the Nazi occupation.

But reality and ideology inevitably clash. The crisis is evidently world wide and everywhere the rulers are calling for sacrifices to save their moribund system. In resisting these calls, workers in all countries will grow to recognise their common interests in opposing and ultimately overturning the system that exploits them and drives them towards poverty.  

Amos 6/3/10

In the lead-up to the General Election all serious factions of the bourgeoisie have openly put forward the need to introduce the most savage cuts, most of them aimed at the public sector. As opposed to the 1997 election slogan of New Labour - "things can only get better" - things got bad and are getting worse. Already we are faced with an all-out attack on pay and conditions. Many different sectors of workers have faced stringent attacks, provoking different struggles to defend jobs and wages, the postal workers and oil refinery workers being among the most notable examples.

Today, we are seeing sectors of workers less known for their tradition of militancy being forced into strike action to defend themselves. British Airways cabin crew and civil service workers have voted for strike action.

On Monday and Tuesday 8/9 March up to a quarter of a million civil service workers  could strike. These strikes follow a ballot which saw a vote for strike action and a vote for an overtime ban. These strikes will involve Job Centre staff, tax workers, coastguards and court staff, who are looking at losing up to a third of their redundancy entitlements, costing them tens of thousands of pounds if they lose their jobs. The measures being proposed will save the government up to £500 million; but this is a essentially a warm-up by the government paving the way for future cuts.

In this situation facing tens of thousands of government employees, the PCS (the Public and Commercial Services union) are attempting to emulate the postal union, the CWU, in introducing a series of rolling strikes which not only separate these sectors of workers from others but will also sap the energy from the movement. This is really pernicious because this sector covers such a wide range of workers. All face the possibility of striking on different days and in different sectors, or, like the postal workers, the possibility of a long drawn out series of strikes which are easily prey to the manipulations of the PCS.

In British Airways, against management plans to introduce a new fleet on lower pay and worse conditions, a prelude to cutting pay and conditions including cutting existing crew members across the fleet, British Airways cabin crew voted overwhelmingly for strike action. Here, the carve-up before there were any strikes  was blatant. There was a meeting of Unite branches at Kempton Park racecourse on 25 February attended by more than a thousand workers in which there was a clear majority for strike action.

This provoked a comment from Len McCluskey, Unite's assistant general secretary: "We won't be giving any deadlines to anybody. Calm needs to be injected into the situation." A further statement was made by a Unite spokesman in the Guardian (4/3/10): "Negotiations are certainly ongoing. We do not want to create any sense that we are not serious about negotiating. And announcing strike dates would do that. We will announce strike dates when all other options have been exhausted".

In an atmosphere of management harassment and paranoia BA is attempting to divide cabin crew by setting up a new union, the PCCC (Professional Cabin Crew Council) which claims that it represents ‘ordinary' cabin crew. In the meantime, cabin crew are expected to work with reduced staff and if they talk to passengers about the strike or their grievances they are severely disciplined by BA management. They are also being attacked  by the media who emphasise at each and every opportunity the ‘inconvenience' that a strike will force upon the innocent public. It is the sort of intimidation that smacks of the bombastic bullying and harassment meted out to postal workers during last year's strikes.

The prevarication from Unite is aimed at keeping control of the situation and reaching a settlement with BA, or in a, for the union, worse case scenario reduce the strike action. At the time of writing, it is looking increasingly likely that the union will come up with a deal which is worse than useless to the workers:

"Hopes of a deal in the British Airways cabin crew dispute were rising last night as the unions offered to take a pay cut. The Unite union and its cabin crew branch put forward a cost-saving plan that would involve taking a 3.5 per cent pay cut and freezing salaries for two years." (Daily Mail, 6/3/10) To this the Guardian (5/3/10) added the possibility of "An agreement to create a ‘new fleet' consisting of new, lower-paid recruits on separate planes." This looks like a classic example of ‘divide and rule.

It is a sign of the times when sectors such as BA's cabin crew workers or civil service workers are being brought into struggle. It is an expression of both the depth of the economic crisis and the fundamental need of the British bourgeoisie to make all sectors of workers pay for the crisis. By the same token, these disputes express the need for all workers to fight together. Workers have to draw the lessons of past struggles, in particular the postal workers who are still waiting for the results of union/management ‘negotiations'. The postal workers are in this position because they allowed the CWU to isolate them. Allowing the union to reduce the struggle to specialised negotiations with the bosses can only sap workers' will to fight and their ability to control and spread the struggle.  

Melmoth 6/3/10

see also

Unions use ‘anti-union' laws against the workers [40]

This article, from the printed edition of World Revolution, has already been published online here [42]

People go into bourgeois politics for diverse reasons, but few are able to resist the opportunity to use their membership of parliament or government as a way of lining their own pockets. Their loyalty to the state as it deceives  and exploits the population is amply rewarded by large salaries, bribes, luxurious privileges, and ‘plenty of time on their hands'.

The ongoing MP expenses scandal at Westminster revealed this basic truth of the workings of the democratic machinery of the state. It's certainly interesting to know the ugly details of the swinish greed of those whose job it is extol the principles of equality and social responsibility.

It's also instructive to see the increasing scale of the politicians' avarice: it seems that the more capitalism sinks into its irresolvable crisis, the more those responsible for the system try to save their own skins at the expense of the population with ever greater theft from the public purse. The colossal bonuses paid to top bank employees, often the same people who were responsible for losses of billions of pounds during the credit crunch, echoes in the private sector MPs' sordid milking of the public cow. 

But a question needs answering. Why does the bourgeois press and other media parade all this venality in front of our noses on the front pages and the first item on news bulletins? Why not continue to keep it quiet in order not to enrage the mass of the population which is  meanwhile sinking deeper into poverty?

The bourgeoisie learnt long ago - possibly with the enquiries into child labour in the factories in the 19th century - that it couldn't completely hide the vast corruption and inhumanity of the system from the eyes of the working class. It had to find a way of presenting it to them which would preserve the existing social system from any serious threat from the exploited and divert the latter into false solutions. Thus, the most intelligent and powerful ruling classes in the world have sometimes give us a glimpse of the truth while, at the same time, portraying their intrinsic, exploiting nature as something temporary, exceptional, or if widespread, something that can be reformed if enough energy and pressure is applied through the existing democratic machinery. Here the leftists today show their worth to capitalism by pretending we can ‘smash' all the various abuses of the system.  

Thus the MPs' expenses scandal was uncovered by a persistent and courageous lone journalist (already dramatised in a TV film); MPs have been sacked, and have had to repay the expenses they falsely claimed, while senior politicians have united to pledge to clean up public life, blah, blah, blah.

However this familiar process of redemption after a public scandal has not been very convincing; the electoral process has not yet been reinvigorated. Today the bourgeoisie has less room to manoeuvre and the scandals are more and more enormous.

The corruption of MPs is not an abuse of the system, it is the democratic system.   

Como 6/3/10

see also

Expenses scandal: cynicism is not enough [45]

When a general election comes around leftist groups are put in an embarrassing position. Typically they call themselves ‘socialist' or ‘revolutionary' and, as part of their basic function, criticise the Labour Party, whether in government of opposition. The problem they have at election time is how to retain their ‘radical' credentials while taking part in the whole parliamentary circus.

In the pages of Socialist Worker (13/2/10) you can read their answer to the very concrete question "Who do you vote for?" Because "After 13 years of bloody war, privatisation and assaults on workers' living standards, some workers say they will never vote Labour again" the SWP is participating in a Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) which is standing 50 candidates. Elsewhere they will call for a vote for other groups like Respect.

This is a simple scheme enabling workers to let off steam and protest about Labour with a trip to the polling station to vote for groups and parties that put forward the same state capitalist policies as Labour. It won't mean voting Labour, just for Labour policies.

However the SWP note "Unfortunately in most areas, workers won't have a TUSC or other left candidate to vote for. The choice will be much more stark - vote Labour or don't vote at all." They don't explain why the workers who say they're never going to vote Labour again because of the experience of the last 13 years have got it wrong. Where millions are in a position to see that all the parties are offering the same austerity policies, the SWP claim that "there is an important difference between Labour and the Tories. Basically it comes down to class. Labour still retains a link with the organised working class through its union affiliations."

There is no class difference between Labour and Tory parties. The unions do indeed have links with Labour, but their function is to control the working class and undermine its struggles. Among the minority of workers who are in unions there is a growing suspicion of their pretence to represent workers.

The SWP say they will not "cover up" Labour's "horrendous record," but then give reasons to vote for them. For the SWP "A class line will open up as the election gets closer. Most workers will grudgingly line up with Labour against the Tories." Actually, a real class line separates those who tout for the Labour Party and the electoral process from those who insist that the working class can only defend itself through its collective struggle.

Socialist Worker says that "If the Tories win the election, reactionaries and employers throughout the land will rejoice - and celebrate by throwing more shit at us. Many workers will feel depressed and less confident to fight." ‘More shit' being the operative words, that is to say, whoever gets in, there will be more shit on top of what Labour have already dished out. Yet the SWP have the cheek to say that "If Labour wins, workers will feel a little more confident". How does that work out? Let's vote for the government that's been in charge for the last 13 years? That's going to make us feel confident? When workers voted for Labour at the last two elections in 2005 and 2001 there is no evidence that it led to outbreaks of confidence and joie de vivre across the country. It's true that in 1945, 1964 and 1997 there were massive illusions in incoming Labour governments, and in February 1974 there was the mistaken belief that the Tories had been ‘kicked out' by the workers rather than replaced as a governing team by the ruling class. But a more realistic view of past elections reveals them as moments in the life of capitalism's political apparatus, spectacles giving the working class false hopes in the possibility of change through the mechanisms of democracy.

There are circumstances in which workers can gain confidence: in the class struggle when workers act together in solidarity with one another, in defence of their own interests, and, ultimately, against the government, regardless of what colour it's wearing.

The SWP says that "Millions of workers will hold their breath, bite their lip and vote Labour. Every one of them will feel disappointed and indignant." We agree. If you follow the advice of the SWP (or any of the many other groups that spout the same sort of line) you will be disappointed and indignant. The alternative was demonstrated by many groups of workers in Britain during 2009. The occupations at Visteon and Vestas, the solidarity actions over Lindsey and beyond, are reminders that the working class can best express itself in struggle - in strikes, occupations, demonstrations and protests - and is only atomised as millions of separate individuals when stood in isolation in the polling booth.  

Car 3/3/10

On his death there were many reminders that Michael Foot,  leader of the Labour Party from 1980-83, had described himself as an "inveterate peacemonger". The evidence of his life says something different.

In the 1930s he campaigned for arms to be sent to fuel the war in Spain.

In 1940 he was the main author of Guilty Men, a 40,000 word book written after the Dunkirk debacle that criticised the lack of British preparedness for war and the policy of appeasement towards German imperialism.That this meant the pursuit of a policy of military aggression was confirmed when Foot (like his boss Lord Beaverbook) was part of the movement for a "Second Front Now" that wanted a major invasion of western Europe years before the actual Normandy landings of 1944.

When he was Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition he was one of the most jingoist supporters of the Falklands War. In parliament the Tories cheered speeches in which "He did the nation a service" and had "spoken for Britain". Appropriately Foot congratulated Thatcher on her victory.

In the 1990s he was one of the first to advocate the bombing of Serbia, and, indeed, went on to demand an extension of the action as "The West will have to do more than bomb Serbia."

An Early Day Motion was tabled after his death describing him as an "internationalist". Far from being an ‘internationalist' he was a patriotic British nationalist, in the same way that his ‘socialism' was a commitment to state capitalism. Far from being a ‘peacemonger,' he was, like all the leading Labour Party figures since the First World War, an inveterate warmonger.  

Car 5/3/10

The great and good of this world, dressed in smart suits, swapped pleasantries at the last Davos forum on 27-30 January in Switzerland. Armed with their first-rate education and culture, they found the right words to describe the terrible earthquake which ravaged Haiti on 12 January. Let's hear what the highly respected Bill Clinton, the former US president, had to say: "this is an opportunity to reinvent the future of the Haitian people and I invite you to be part of the adventure". This is how these gentlemen talk. More than 210,000 deaths, hundreds of thousands of orphans and homeless, and they dare to talk to us about ‘opportunity' and ‘adventure'!

What's more these cynical and abject words contain a lying propaganda message: the media, the politicians, the governments, all of them claim that Haiti will recover thanks to the help of the ‘international community'. In reality, there will be no ‘reconstruction', no ‘renaissance of the martyred island', no formidable ‘adventure'. The future for the population of Haiti is unbearably bleak and this will be true as long as this system of inhuman exploitation survives.

There can be no doubt about this. In recent years there has been a whole series of catastrophes and not one of them has given birth to a ‘new society' rising on the ruins and the corpses. The population of Haiti already knows a bit about this: "Before the earthquake on 12 January, Haiti was already host to a number of uncompleted, indeed forgotten, ‘post-disaster' construction sites. For example, the town of Gonaives, which was gravely affected by cyclones Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike (2008) is still in a more or less apocalyptic condition. The ten thousand houses that were destroyed or damaged can still be seen, the town is practically in ruins and its inhabitants poverty-stricken. It's the same for the inhabitants of the area of Fonds-Verettes, destroyed by torrential rain in May 2004. They still live in a phantom village because little has been done to re-house them" (Le Monde 17/1/10).

This time, the contrast between promises and reality is perhaps even stronger and more revolting. All the states, with China, Canada, France, and USA to the fore, have not stopped going on about their efforts to ‘help the Haitian people'. Each gift, each humanitarian action has been covered in media publicity. But the same Haitian people continue to suffer and die. The monsoon season is beginning and this will bring in its wake floods and mudslides. Since the earthquake nearly a million and a half people have been made homeless and at least that number again are living in shacks made out of planks, cloth and tiles. And what are the saviour states offering? "Paris will be putting 1000 tents and 16,000 tarpaulins at the disposition of the Haitians" (Le Figaro 17/2/10) . Yes, you read it right, the generous ‘international community' is going to give the people of Haiti tents and tarpaulins to protect themselves against cyclones. And why not umbrellas?

In reality, all these states, who have shown themselves to be quite capable of mobilising thousands of soldiers to ‘maintain public order', aren't even capable of providing enough of these miserable shelters. "Around 50,000 tents have so far been delivered to the victims. 200,000 more are needed for the 1.2 million men, women and children living in camps" (Radio Canada 14/1/10) Why aren't there enough tents? "The massive delivery of tents to the victims, which was envisaged previously, has been put off recently because they were considered too big, costly and ineffective"(ibid). Yes, even these bits of cloth are too costly. Human lives clearly aren't worth much in the eyes of the capitalists.

This earthquake has left the population sinking even more deeply into misery and they don't need to be told any fairy stories. This downward spiral is going to go on because there will be no real reconstruction apart perhaps for a few symbolic buildings like the presidential palace, the UN base, hotels and a few show houses. The bourgeoisie knows this very well and sometimes says so in a very diplomatic way. The Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper let it slip that the reconstruction of the country would take "at least 10 years", in other words, never.

This suffering is intolerable. Everyone who has any honesty in their hearts knows that ‘something has to be done'. But this ‘something' means putting an end to this society of exploitation. Only the end of capitalism and the birth of a new society, communism, can really put an end to all the plagues descending on humanity!   

Pawel 28/1/10

We received via our Spanish website on 3 March 2010 a commentary on the situation facing the residents of working class and popular neighbourhoods in the urban area of Concepcion after the earthquake in February. Against the propaganda of the international media which denigrated the conduct of the local population and accused them of 'scandalous' acts of looting, this text restores reality by showing the authentically proletarian spirit of solidarity and mutual aid which animated the workers in the redistribution of goods; at the same time the workers were organising their own self-defence against the predatory activities of armed criminal gangs. This text was also published on libcom.org.

By now, it is well known that many people did the common sense thing and entered the centres in which provisions were being stored, taking no more than what they needed. Such an act is logical, rational, necessary and inevitable - so much so that it appears absurd even to debate it. People organised themselves spontaneously - giving out milk, nappies and water according to each individual's need, with attention paid in particular to the number of children within each family. The need to take available products was so evident - and the determination of the people to exercise their right to survive was so powerful - that even the police ended up helping (extracting commodities from the Lider supermarket in Concepción, for example). And when attempts were made to impede the populace in doing the only thing that it could possibly do, the buildings in question were set alight - it's equally logical, after all, that if tonnes of foodstuffs have to rot instead of being consumed, that they are burnt, thus avoiding infection. These incidences of ‘looting' have allowed thousands of people to subsist for hours in darkness, without drinking water or even the remotest hope that someone might come to their aid.

Now, however, in the space of just a few hours, the situation has changed drastically. Throughout the penquista (Concepción) metropolis, well-armed, mobile gangs have started to operate in expensive vehicles, concerning themselves with looting not just small businesses, but also residential buildings and houses. Their objective is to hoard the scarce few goods that people have been able to retrieve from the supermarkets, as well as their domestic appliances, money and whatever else they may find. In some parts of Concepción, these gangs have looted houses before setting them alight and then fleeing. Residents, who at first found themselves rendered completely defenceless, have started to organise their own defences, taking it in turns to do security patrols, erecting barricades to protect their roads, and, in some barrios, collectivising their commodities in order to ensure that everyone gets fed.

I don't intend to "complete" the square of information gleaned from other sources with this brief account of events in the last few hours, more I want to bring everyone's attention to the nature of this critical situation, and its relevance from an anti-capitalist viewpoint. The spontaneous impulse of the people to appropriate what they need to subsist, and their tendency towards dialogue, sharing, agreement and collective action, have been present since the first moment of this catastrophe. We have all seen this natural, communitarian tendency in one form or another in our lives. In the midst of the horror experienced by thousands of workers and their families, this impulse to living as a community has emerged as a light in the dark, reminding us that it is never late to start again, to return to our [natural?] selves.

Faced with this organic, natural, communistic tendency, which has given life to the people in this time of shock, the state has paled, revealing its true self: a cold, impotent monster. Moreover, the sudden interruption of the demented production and consumption cycle left industry owners at the mercy of events, forced to wait, begging for the return of order. In short, a genuine breach opened in society, in which sparks of the new world which inhabits the hearts of common people. It was necessary, therefore, urgent in fact, to restore the old order of monopoly, abuses and the prey. But it didn't come from the highest spheres, but from the very bottom of class society. Those in charge of putting everything back in its right place - that is to say, imposing by force the relations of terror which permit private, capitalist appropriation - have been the drug-trafficking mafiosi, embedded within the population at large; the upstarts within the upstarts, children of the working class, allied with bourgeois elements in order to ascend at the cost of the poisoning of their brothers, the trade of their sisters' sex and the avid consumerism of their own children. Mafiosi - that is to say, capitalists in the purest form: predators of their class, lounging in 4x4s, armed with automatic pistols, prepared to intimidate and even displace their own neighbours or residents of other barrios, with the aim of monopolising the black market and making easy money i.e. power.

That these mafia elements are natural allies of the state and the boss class is manifested in the use of their undignified misdeeds in the mass media in order to make the already demoralised population enter into a panic, therefore justifying the country's militarisation. What scene could be more prosperous for our bosses and politicians - walking hand in hand - who see this catastrophic crisis as nothing more than a good opportunity for good business, squeezing double profits out of a work force that is bent double by fear and desperation?

On the part of the enemies of this social order, it is meaningless to sing odes to looting without defining the social content of such actions. A group of people - partially organised, or united by a common goal, at least - taking and distributing the products that they need to survive is not the same as armed gangs looting the population with the intention of making their own profits. What remains clear is that the earthquake of Saturday 27th didn't just hit the working class terribly and destroy existent infrastructures. It has also overturned social relations in this country. In a matter of hours, the class struggle has emerged - warts and all - before our eyes, which are perhaps too used to television images to be able to capture the essence of the course of events. The class struggle is here, in the barrios reduced to rubble and gloom, fizzling and crackling at the bottom of society, forcing the fatal crash between two classes of human beings who in the end find themselves face to face; on one side, the social men and women who search among themselves in order to help each other and to share, and on the other, the antisocials who pillage them and shoot at them in order to begin their own primitive accumulation of capital.

We are here, the opaque, anonymous beings, constantly trapped in our grey lives - the exploited, the neighbour, the parent, but ready to build links with those who share the same depression. On one side, the proletariat; on the other, capital. It's that simple. In many neighbourhoods of this devastated land, in these early morning moments, people are starting to organise their own defence against the armed gangs. At this moment, class consciousness is starting to be enacted materially by those who have been forced - in the blink of an eye - to understand that their lives belong to themselves alone, and that no one will come to their aid.

anon 3/3/10

Book Review:- A new green history of the world: the environment and the collapse of great civilizations

In the light of the recent concerted propaganda campaigns undertaken by large industrial concerns, some politicians, Christian fundamentalists and various capitalist apologists against the science of global warming, and given Conoco Phillips, Caterpillar and BP's recent defection from Obama's token US Climate Action Partnership, Clive Ponting's book, which underlines the threats to our very existence, provides a welcome antidote.

This is a revised edition of a book of Ponting from 1991. Why has the author felt the need for a new edition in which every chapter, apart from the first, has been revised, rewritten and expanded? The answer lies in the deterioration and increasing destruction of the planet and capitalism's inability to even begin to deal with it. Ponting says that in the first edition he struck a balance between pessimism and optimism. Having continued to diligently and thoroughly research the changing situation and the growing dangers for mankind, Ponting was forced to return to the question as most changes during that time were "changes for the worst", as he says in his 2007 preface. There are a billion more people on the planet. Billions more tonnes of CO2 have been pumped into the atmosphere. We have seen the manifest failure of ‘international cooperation'; states offering "no remedy" and the complete failure of the world's leading power, the USA, to seriously address the question. Indeed, the major concern of the USA to maintain and develop its military capacities against all rivals leaves it not only incapable of focussing on the dangers but actively contributing to them. Ponting also notes the question of ‘positive feedback' and irreversible changes, where global warming affects the elements that further exacerbate global warming and threaten to spiral out of control. Though most of these effects are, they do not necessarily have to be man-made. Take the example of the release of methane from under the Siberian tundra, a natural phenomenon far more dangerous for global warming than CO2, but one that capitalism will do nothing about. This second edition is much more pessimistic about capitalism's ability to solve any of the problems facing the global environment.

A process unwinding through history

The strength of this book is in its broad historical sweep, starting with hunter-gatherer societies, through to what Ponting calls "the first transition" of agriculture and the rise and fall of civilisations up to his "second transition" around 1800 to the systematic use of fossil fuels during capitalism's ‘industrial revolution.'

He describes the general harmony of hunter-gatherers with their environment and points to evidence of their conservation methods. Ponting posits some large-scale extinctions of animals by hunter-gatherers, but what scientific evidence there is around this issue contradicts the idea. He sees sedentism, i.e. settlement, as a consequence of agriculture rather than the other way round which explains the development of agriculture better than anything. He details the rise of civilisation (what Marx agreed with Fourier was "the war of the rich against the poor") and details the rise and the fall of many of these civilisations as due to man-made environmental consequences.

The lessons of the destruction of Easter Island, right at the beginning of the book, set the tone for Ponting's detailed research and analysis: that civilisation is not only a war of rich against poor, but of ruling classes against the planet itself. On Easter Island, an analogy for the whole period to come, ideological and economic short-termism literally destroyed the ground under these people's feet, reducing these once great sea-farers to paddling about in the shallows in reed boats in a pathetic and unsuccessful bid to survive.

Within a thousand years of the advent of agriculture proper, the environment was being damaged by deforestation and soil erosion. Soil doesn't just get displaced - it can easily be destroyed as a productive medium (Marx talks of capitalism destroying the soil and the workers in the same sentence). Disease jumping from domesticated animals was also a negative factor from agriculture.

Tracing the decline of its agricultural base, the great Sumerian Empire collapsed into an impoverished backwater. Some centuries later, the same thing happened in Central Mesopotamia and again, a few centuries later, around Baghdad. Similarly, due to extended irrigation and the consequent salinisation of the soil and deforestation, the civilisation of the Indus Valley collapsed around 4,000 years ago. China, the most advanced civilisation by 1200, was also affected by man-made environmental factors and most of its peoples lived in a permanent state of near-starvation. The civilisations around Syria were similarly affected and the great Mayan Empire collapsed into starvation, increased mortality, warfare, disease and decay due to deforestation, soil erosion and declining crop yields. In China, Japan, Ethiopia, Mesoamerica, the Central Andes, Western Asia, the elites and their entourages had to be supported by the masses engaged in food production, though this did engender major scientific advances at many levels - while not lessening the suffering of the masses. These states more and more coerced their populations and a consequence was large-scale warfare, great massacres, starvation, deprivation and deportations. Many of these states brought about their own collapse.

The book details the global independent development of agriculture and the independent development of states ruled by religious, political and royal elites with different environmental issues playing a part in their rise and fall. In the 6th century, Solon was arguing against cultivation on steep slopes of Greece and Engels points out the role of over-grazing in the decline of Greece. Environmental factors played a part in the fall of the Roman Empire, particularly its provinces and especially North Africa.

The rise of capitalism

Christianity decreed the superiority of man over flora and fauna and, though there was some dissent from this within Christianity and Judaism, this was God-given, eternal and part of the Divine Plan. Even in the eastern religions, where man was more at one with nature, unlike the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religions, the economic and political forces in these areas also plundered the earth. The classical civilised idea in rising capitalism was that everything in nature is there for the provision of man and, though this idea was strongly undermined by Darwinism, it remains the blind ideology and driving force of capitalism today in its rapacious destruction of the planet and its unquenchable thirst for profits.

The reinforcement of God's order of the supremacy of man over nature well-suited what Ponting calls the ‘second transition', the rise of capitalism where the contradiction of rise and fall is brought to its apogee. However he sees the rise of capitalism, he doesn't distinguish it from the previous modes of production of civilisation. Whereas these previous societies were characterised by underproduction, capitalism is marked by overproduction - not in relation to need but in relation to profits. Indeed, the ecological problems are greatly exacerbated by capitalism's frenzied quest for profits, ever greater production and growth.

Ponting clearly details the horrors of the rise of capitalism and its destruction of life through work, disease, pollution, urban sprawls, short-termism, poverty and its wanton destruction of the structure of the planet. He also points out that, contrary to previous societies, under capitalism it's not the shortage of food itself but the shortage of money to buy food that causes starvation and malnutrition. He details the massive wastages of shipping commodities around the world, built-in obsolescence and advertising. One telling example that he gives in relation to capitalism's ability to deal with global warming (for which he underlines the evidence) is the way it dealt with the depletion of the ozone layer. This is a relatively easy problem to deal with involving scrapping one cheap, easy to produce chemical and replacing it with another, safer one. Capitalism fought against this tooth and nail because profits were at risk and, to date, at least a million people have died from cancers due to this problem. It took years of denial and years of endless meetings until the problem was addressed, and then only when profits were assured. Ozone levels will be back to 1974 levels by 2065 at the earliest, so many more will still die. Global warming is a much more extensive and complex problem that goes to the heart and soul of capitalism and its necessity for profits. We can have no illusions that capitalism will seriously address this question.

Rejection of marxism

The book tends to ignore the development of imperialism which is intimately linked to the destruction of the environment and a potential threat to humanity in itself. It also tends to see the problem lying with ‘liberal' deregulated capitalism, which itself collapsed just after the book's publication, making not a bit of difference to the perspective. But our main criticism is the book's rejection of marxism. Ponting maintains that marxism "disregarded the environmental consequences" because of the necessity for increased production by the working class. He further distorts Marx by seeing his early Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (EPM) as "more idealistic". He quotes an ambiguous statement by Marx: "Nature taken abstractly, for itself, and fixedly isolated from man, is nothing for man" out of context, along with other quotes that Marx relates to capital and nature. But Ponting sees communism as a particular part of capitalism, a totalitarian expression of it where there is a direct line: Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin, the abomination of the Soviet Union. In this respect, he's a straight purveyor of bourgeois ideology.

More significant for the views of Marx on nature is the work of John Bellamy Foster and particularly his Marx's Ecology, Materialism and Nature, where he demonstrates the centrality of ecology for a materialist understanding of history from a marxist point of view. This expands on Marx's thought, showing that Marx understood alienation to include human estrangement from the natural world and demonstrating that capitalism is the main problem. Foster clearly links capitalism to the destruction of the ecosystem. Capitalism's framework is from the irrational perspective of profits and productive growth at all costs from which no solution can come and global warming is just one (major) problem that shows the need for massive social reorganisation. Foster quotes Marx: "Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die." Capitalism is incapable of working with nature and its very operation violates nature as the drive to accumulate profits intensifies its destructiveness.

A last word from Marx (Capital, volume 3, chapter 46): "From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of individuals on the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, it beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias" (‘good heads of the household' in terms of working for future generations).  

Baboon 19/02/10

see also:

Copenhagen shows that capitalism has no solutions [59]

In February ‘Allied' forces in Afghanistan began a new offensive against the Taliban, trading under the name of ‘Operation Moshtarak'. The stated aim of the operation was to drive the Taliban out of the Marja region of Helmand Province. British troops played a key role in the operation along with US and Afghan troops. ‘Moshtarak' is supposed to be the first of a series of a new type of operation that will enable the consolidation of control over all of Afghanistan, finally bringing the Taliban insurgency to an end.

British troops, in the meantime, have adopted new rules of engagement called "courageous restraint". This means that the gallant British Army has generously decided to use less heavy artillery in populated areas. The idea is that the Afghan population, no longer being quite so indiscriminately butchered, will be grateful to the Allies and line up behind the Karzai government.

Caught in the middle

The Allies are trying to shift from naked use of force to a more nuanced strategy designed to win over the ‘hearts and minds' of the Afghan population. The brutality of the occupation is well illustrated by one horrific incident (only reported by The Times in the UK) - the alleged massacre of several children by US troops in the Nurang province in December 2009: "Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed". This atrocity triggered anti-American demonstrations in Kabul, as have numerous other ‘mistaken' shootings, executions, missile attacks and air raids on civilians.

But despite the new policy of ‘restraint, heavy weapons are still being used - during the first days of ‘Moshtarak' one missile destroyed a house, killing 12 people, 6 of whom were children. Initially, the US was very apologetic and blamed technical problems but later this was retracted, replaced by claims that the house was being used by the Taliban. This of course, is the logical result of the Allies encouraging the local residents to stay in their homes while the offensive takes place. Residents were warned through leaflet drops not to give shelter to Taliban militants.

Whatever the facts behind this incident, it is clear that innocent civilians are, once again, the real victims of the conflict. If they fail to resist armed fighters from entering their homes, they become legitimate targets of US missiles.

This is not to say the Taliban itself exercises ‘restraint' when it comes to killing civilians. Far from it. According to the UN mission in Afghanistan, civilian casualties in 2009 were 2412 with a further 3566 injured. 67% were directly attributable to anti-government forces (i.e. Taliban), 25% to pro-government forces, with the remainder unclear.

Prospects for success

Regardless of the different strengths of the forces at play there is no reason to suppose that Operation Moshtarak will come to a speedy conclusion. We've been here before. The original incarnation of the Taliban was largely crushed by the initial US offensive in 2001. This hasn't prevented it from reforming and returning to plague the Karzai puppet government. Indeed, part of the reason for the Taliban's resurgence, is the widespread corruption and gangsterism of the Karzai regime.

In a recent poll by Oxfam in Afghanistan "70 percent of people questioned viewed poverty and unemployment as the main drivers of the conflict. Nearly half of those surveyed said corruption and the ineffectiveness of their government were the main reasons for the continued fighting, while 36 percent said the Taliban insurgency was to blame".

The awful poverty of most ordinary Afghans is encapsulated in the 40% unemployment rate, a pool of potential recruits for the Taliban. As for corruption, in some polls this is highlighted as being even more of a concern than violence and poverty. Bribes account for nearly 23% of the country's GDP (roughly equal to the opium trade). It's not just Afghans with their noses in the trough: three quarters of all corruption investigations involve Westerners.

Far from resolving these deep-rooted issues, it is clear that the Western presence only exacerbates them. This potent mix will ensure that unrest will continue regardless of military victories or defeats.

The role of poverty in pushing young people into armed forces is also illustrated away from Afghanistan. Thanks to the continuing growth in unemployment, the British Army has met its recruitment targets for the first time in years. In reality the typical British soldier has been led to the battlefield by the same capitalism-created deprivation as their Taliban foes.

Both the Allies and the Taliban are enemies of the working class

Afghanistan encapsulates the reality of war in capitalism's epoch of decay. In the absence of hope that they can provide for themselves and their families, workers and other exploited strata are driven into the arms of the capitalists and their armies and reactionary militias. There they massacre each other in the service of the very ruling class that is responsible for their impoverishment in the first place.

The awful conditions of these conflicts, the indoctrination and discipline imposed upon them in order to overcome the natural human reluctance to kill, tend to dehumanise the military until the sorts of brutal massacres witnessed in Afghanistan become inevitable.

Communists do not support any side in these conflicts. We denounce the crimes of all sides while exposing the processes in capitalist society that produce them. Only when the exploited refuse to sacrifice themselves for their exploiters will the perspective of replacing capitalism with a truly human society without exploitation and without war begin to come into vision.  

Ishamael 4/3/10

see also:  

Afghanistan's War: The Road to Hell Is Paved With Bad Intentions [68]

At every big election the media tell us how important it is that everyone exercises their democratic rights and votes. There are supposed to be clear choices between very different parties. And if you don't vote then you can't complain about who gets in!

Revolutionaries start by asking what the needs of the working class are. How can workers advance their collective struggles? What forms of organisation best serve the needs of the class struggle? What factors are important in the development of class consciousness? How do workers begin to recognise the need to express class solidarity and that they are part of an international class? What are the obstacles to the development of the struggle and of consciousness?

With the last question one of the biggest obstacles for the working class is the idea that democracy can be made to serve its interests. Instead of struggling to transform itself into a force that can destroy capitalism and establish a new society it is supposed to troop in single file through the polling stations, as so many detached individuals. Where it is clear that all the parties only offer slightly different varieties of the same militarism and austerity each individual is supposed to choose a ‘lesser evil'. Separated in isolated polling booths, the working class is divided and capitalism rules.

Come to a meeting where there will not only be discussion about the bourgeoisie's circus, but also how revolutionaries relate to the most positive developments within the working class.

When workers are faced with unemployment, wage cuts and harsher working conditions, the question is posed of how workers' struggles can develop. In the UK, with a general election round the corner, the media tell us that this is an opportunity to use our democratic rights. However, democracy is not an abstract principle that stands above society - it is an integral part of the current order of things. Capitalism is a class society and the democratic circus hides the truth of what parliament and elections really are. As Lenin put it in State and Revolution: "To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament - this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics."

The idea that workers can embrace democracy along with their exploiters is a delusion the ruling class puts a lot of energy into promoting.

How can workers advance their collective struggles?

The real field where the working class can advance their collective struggle is not in elections, but in the class struggle. The class struggle is where the force of the working class lies. It is where it develops its consciousness and discovers the forms of organisation it needs to succeed and the ones it needs to jettison.

In the nineteenth century the main forms of organisation that developed in the workers movement were the trade unions and the mass workers parties. The trade unions were able to win lasting reforms and the workers' political organisations supported democratic demands such as the right to organise in unions and for workers to vote in bourgeois elections. As the electorate expanded, the parties of the Second International sent members to parliament to win political reform. Within certain limits, therefore, workers could meaningfully participate in bourgeois elections through their own parties.

However, the relative success of the struggle of the struggle for reforms led to the development of the ideology of ‘reformism': Marx and Engels' views on the eventual need to overthrow the capitalist state through revolution were gradually sidelined, and the idea that the working class could gradually move towards socialism through democratic reforms became more and more widespread, especially as the ascent of the capitalist economy seemed unstoppable. All that was needed was to win parliament for socialism and turn capitalism's bounty to the needs of everyone. Only a minority, on the left, stood up to this ‘revision' of marxism.

The advent of capitalism's decadence was very loudly announced with the destruction unleashed in the Great War. It was not a ‘war to end all wars', but the beginning of a period of great imperialist rivalries and destruction. The new Communist International summed up the change in period and the change in attitude to elections. In this extract from a report to the Second Congress of 1920, for example:

"The struggle for communism, however, must be based on a theoretical analysis of the character of the present epoch (the culminating point of capitalism, its imperialist self-negation and self-destruction, the uninterrupted spread of civil war etc.) ...The attitude of the Third International to parliament is determined not by new theoretical ideas, but by the change in the role of parliament itself. In the preceding historical epoch parliament was an instrument of the developing capitalist system, and as such played a role that was in a certain sense progressive. In modern conditions of unbridled imperialism parliament has become a weapon of falsehood, deception and violence, a place of enervating chatter. In the face of the devastation, embezzlement, robbery and destruction committed by imperialism, parliamentary reforms which are wholly lacking in consistency, durability and order lose all practical significance for the working masses... At the present time parliament cannot be used by the Communists as the arena in which to struggle for reforms and improvements in working-class living standards as was the case at certain times during the past epoch. The focal point of political life has shifted fully and finally beyond the boundaries of parliament...."

The contributions of the communist left

Although the Third International was able to recognise this shift in focus, the full implications were not drawn out. While the majority followed the contradictory idea of ‘revolutionary parliamentarism', it's in the contributions of the communist left that you see a greater development of understanding.

At the Second Congress, for instance, Amadeo Bordiga put forward theses on parliamentarism that insisted "Parliamentarism is the form of political representation peculiar to the capitalist order [...] Communists deny the possibility that the working class will ever conquer power through a majority of parliamentary seats. The armed revolutionary struggle alone will take it to its goal. The conquest of power by the proletariat, which forms the starting point of communist economic construction, leads to the violent and immediate abolition of the democratic organs and their replacement by organs of proletarian power - by workers' councils. The exploiting class is in this way robbed of all political rights, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, a system of class government and representation, will be realised. The abolition of parliamentarism becomes a historical task of the communist movement. [...] In the present historical epoch ... there is no possibility of exploiting parliamentarism for the revolutionary cause of communism. Clarity of propaganda no less than preparation for the final struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat demand that communists carry out propaganda for a boycott of the elections on the part of the workers."

In the same year as the Second Congress Anton Pannekoek published World Revolution and Communist Tactics in which he emphasised the need to leave behind old ideas "How we are to eradicate the traditional bourgeois mentality that paralyses the strength of the proletarian masses ...The most tenacious and intractable element in this mentality is dependence upon leaders, whom the masses leave to determine general questions and to manage their class affairs. Parliamentarianism inevitably tends to inhibit the autonomous activity by the masses that is necessary for revolution. Fine speeches may be made in parliament exhorting the proletariat to revolutionary action; it is not in such words that the latter has its origins, however, but in the hard necessity of there being no other alternative. ... Revolution requires social reconstruction to be undertaken, difficult decisions made, the whole proletariat involved in creative action - and this is only possible if first the vanguard, then a greater and greater number take matters in hand themselves, know their own responsibilities, investigate, agitate, wrestle, strive, reflect, assess, seize chances and act upon them. But all this is difficult and laborious; thus, so long as the working class thinks it sees an easier way out through others acting on its behalf - leading agitation from a high platform, taking decisions, giving signals for action, making laws - the old habits of thought and the old weaknesses will make it hesitate and remain passive."

The development of class consciousness

The movement of the working class requires the development of a consciousness of the need to overthrow the existing capitalist economic and political system. Part of this is the realisation that the existing democratic state is a barrier to creating the new society, not a tool to achieve it.

This requires the working class to understand that its interests are opposed to those of the bourgeoisie. This understanding does not develop through electoral campaigns that encourage individual isolation in the ballot box, followed by passivity and frustration as the realisation dawns that nothing has changed.

Consciousness develops in the class struggle, in the workplaces and the streets, as the working class develops solidarity and confronts the reality of the capitalist state. Instead of seeing themselves as isolated citizens workers can begin to see that the attacks on them are part of wider attacks on the rest of the class, and the attacks on living and working standards are undertaken by all capitalist states, whether monolithic or multi-party.

The greatest obstacles to the development of class consciousness are ideological. Workers are confronted with campaigns about the impossibility of communism/socialism, about there being no alternative to capitalism, about the democratic values that supposedly unite us across the class divide.

Democracy is one of the most powerful ideologies that the bourgeoisie has in its armoury. The bourgeois idea of ‘good citizenship' means it is your duty to vote, even if it's only for a ‘lesser evil'. Millions are cynical and apathetic about elections and don't vote because of the corruption of politicians and the accurate view that ‘they're all the same'. However, in itself this is nothing to celebrate and obviously leaves social relations as they are. The course advocated by revolutionaries is an active one.

When workers begin to take control of their own struggles in the first steps toward self-organisation, when discontent about capitalism begins to turn into reflection on the possibility of a completely different society, when consciousness begins to develop with the class struggle, when we see expressions of solidarity and collective action that point to a future human community, then we are witnessing the movement of the working class rather than the dead weight of bourgeois campaigns and parliamentary charades. Revolutionaries aim to play their part in the forward steps taken by the working class, and in exposing the sham of bourgeois democracy. When capitalism offers another round in the democratic game, revolutionaries try to show that the working class struggle offers the prospect of a society that could begin to satisfy human needs, communism.

Hugin 2/4/10

This article is based on a presentation given at WR public meetings.

The ruling class, faced with a bottomless economic crisis, is becoming more and more brutal in its attacks on the exploited.

Every capitalist political party is agreed that the only way to cope with Britain's debt burden is to make unprecedented cuts in public services. In their efforts to squeeze the last drop of profit out of workers' labour power, bosses everywhere are resorting to bullying and intimidation. This is all the more evident when workers show a willingness to resist the assault on their living and working conditions.

Injunctions against strikes

Faced with the threat of a nationwide rail strike against plans to suppress the jobs of 1500 rail maintenance workers, Network Rail got together with the courts to declare that the ballot for strike action was unlawful. This is now becoming an increasingly common response to impending national strikes, especially when they are to take place in key economic sectors. The original British Airways strike at Christmas was also delayed after the court found irregularities in the ballot proceedings. Since such irregularities could be discovered in virtually any strike ballot, the use of injunctions is gradually eroding any possibility of legal strike action - especially because another factor taken into account in the court's decision was the ‘negative' impact on the public interest that a strike on the railways could have.

Ballots were originally made compulsory by the so-called ‘anti-trade union' laws brought in under the last Tory government. Their essential purpose was to stop workers from making the decision to strike in mass meetings where class solidarity is strongest, to make voting on strike action a purely individual choice like voting in elections, and to introduce interminable delays that can sap workers' will to fight. Along with the rules banning secondary pickets and solidarity strikes, these laws already make it virtually impossible for any effective form of class action to be legal. But far from being ‘anti-trade union', the aim of this legislation has always been to strengthen the ability of the union machine to control unofficial action and self-organisation by workers at the level of the shop floor and the street. Now similar legal restrictions are being imposed in response to official union strikes at a national level. Faced with the crisis, the democratic ruling class is moving away from the pretence that the unions have any independent sphere of action. They are increasingly being given the role of unions in Stalinist or fascist regimes as open enforcers of labour discipline. The RMT's acceptance of this legal framework was signalled by the fact that they immediately called off the strike.

Bullying at BA

In British Airways the majority of cabin crew workers have entered into a second week of strikes which has seen them coming up against a bullying and intransigent management. BA has stripped the 2,000 plus striking cabin crew of staff travel perks, which many need in order to travel to work, and docked nearly a fortnight's pay from long-haul flight staff in order to starve them out of the strike. BA have also imposed a disciplinary code which prevents cabin crew from communicating with other workers or passengers, organising internet discussion forums or even making a joke on pain of sacking or suspension from work. BA's greatest fear is that cabin crew will extend the fight to other sectors such as baggage-handlers or pilots, and it has been nakedly encouraging strike-breaking, especially among the pilots who have been offered training as temporary cabin-crew.

BA has also been trying to cut out certain ‘privileges' for union organisers, such as offices for shop stewards and time off for union activities; and this has led Unite to present the struggle as being against BA's ‘union busting' tactics. BA workers are being called upon to stand up for their democratic right to organise in trade unions. Bob Crow, the RMT's left-wing leader, came out with a similar line after the injunction: "this judgment...twists the anti-union laws even further in favour of the bosses" (Guardian, 2 April). For the RMT, the court decision was "an attack on the whole trade union movement" (ibid). The call to defend trade unions from this attack echoes throughout the left-wing press.

But are the unions really defending the workers?

If you don't go beyond the surface, the current struggles seem to be an example of militant unions leading the fight against intransigent bosses. The Unite union with its cabin-crew subsidiary BASSA have attempted to elicit support from the US Teamsters Union and have raised a £700,000 war-chest, imposing a 2% levy on Unite members to support this strike. But look a bit further and you will notice that BASSA have already made it very clear that they were prepared to accept wage-cuts ‘in order to save jobs' as long as they were consulted. BA imported Willy Walsh to take a hatchet to cabin crew staffing in a bid to make BA workers pay for the current recession. The response from BA unions was to immediately concede a pay-cut. Thus we were faced with the sickening image of pickets carrying official union placards saying "we offered a pay-cut" .

There can be no doubt that there is a real willingness among cabin crew workers to fight these attacks: at a mass meeting over 80% of them voted for strike action. However, unless the workers are able to break out of the confines of the present action and spread the strike to other workers in BA and beyond, there is a real danger that the BA workers will be ground down in a long-drawn out strike similar to that of the recent postal workers' strike. After the Communication Workers' Union had exhausted the postal workers with a series of strikes that were rigidly divided between different regions and categories, and isolated within the postal sector, the final deal agreed between the CWU and Royal Mail provides further grounds for doubt that unions really offer the workers any defence from the bosses' attacks.

Posties will receive a 6.9% pay rise over three years and payments totalling £1,400 when all agreed changes have been made, and a 39 hour working week,. All posties know that with inflation (which is set to rise even higher) this is clearly a pay-cut over three years. In exchange the Communication Workers Union have accepted the large-scale modernisation plan put forward by Royal Mail, which will see a retention of 75% of posties as full time with part-time working taking up the remainder. The introduction of new sorting-machines which was at the heart of the dispute will lead to significant job-cuts. The response from the CWU was to praise the settlement saying that it represented a "good deal for its members, particularly in the current financial climate" A CWU representative also went on to say that "many workers - particularly in the public sector- are facing pay freezes, compulsory redundancies and even, in the case of Unite members at British Airways, the prospects of pay cuts. We feel that the proposed deal for our Royal Mail members compares extremely well" (BBC News 23/3/10).

The need for workers to organise themselves

Given the fact that legal strikes are becoming increasingly impossible, workers will be increasingly faced with campaigns to enter the legal arena in order to restore the ‘democratic right to strike' via the trade unions. These campaigns will certainly make it difficult for workers to grasp the real role and nature of the trade unions. In fact, the tendency for unions to become cogs in the capitalist state goes back a long way and is irreversible. It is this fundamental reality which time and time again leads to unions dividing up workers' struggles and selling rotten deals at the end of them. Stifling the class struggle and imposing austerity has become the principal job of the unions in the period of state capitalism. But the great advantage of democracy as a form of bourgeois rule is that it can permit a certain degree of independence to the union apparatus, which is vital if workers are still to see them as their own organisations. In Stalinist and fascist regimes, workers have few illusions in the official unions and are often compelled to take the struggle directly into their own hands - a prime example being the mass assemblies and revocable strike committees which sprang up in Poland during the mass strike of 1980. By removing the last pretence that the workers can use the existing unions to organise effective resistance, the bourgeoisie is running the risk that workers in democratic countries will also come to the conclusion that the only way forward is to take things into their own hands - defy the law, defy the unions, and create their own organisations to direct and generalise the struggle.  

Melmoth/Amos 3/4/10

The ruling class is gearing up for its election. This time the big issue is not who will win, not even how many people will bother to vote, but how to reduce the deficit over the next few years - how to make the working class pay by cutting jobs, pay and services.

The opinion polls and media have gone from predicting a Tory landslide several months ago, to suggestions of a hung parliament with the Liberal Democrats as king-maker. In parallel with this, Gordon Brown has gone from being characterised as a liability for his party to predictions of an unbelievable political comeback. Meanwhile cynicism and apathy have grown with every new scandal about corrupt politicians. But, however the election turns out, all parties know that the priority for the next government is the deficit and the economy. And whether they prioritise cutting the government deficit, or are restrained by fear of a new recession, they all know that they have to attack the working class.

Efficiency savings = job losses

The British economy shrank by 6.2% in the recession and the technical recovery remains fragile at best. Borrowing this year is predicted to be £167bn - down slightly - and to peak at 74.9% GDP in 2014-15. This was the background to the 24 March pre-election budget, which maintained a discreet silence on the attacks they are bringing in, but couldn't hide them completely. Hidden away in a separate document was the plan for £11bn efficiency savings - including 4.3bn in the health service by cutting among other things the IT programme and staff sickness. These savings can only be based on job losses, even if these will not be specified till after the election. As for savings on staff sickness, postal workers and BA staff can tell us what that means: the development of a culture of management bullying.

The TV debate between the Chancellor and his Tory and Lib Dem shadows only reiterated the need for ‘efficiency savings' to cut the deficit. Osborne pledged £12bn, by reducing waste and controlling recruitment. None of them want to say how they will make the savings, whose jobs will go, who will work longer and harder, before the election. Instead they talked about how they would use half these savings - Osborne wants to limit the planned increase in National Insurance contributions to those earning over £35,000, Darling and Cable say the country can't afford it as it's needed to cut the deficit. On the other hand, they claim to want to plough savings back into ‘front line services', which doesn't add up either, both because they've just told us it's needed to reduce the deficit and because once they've cut jobs in ‘efficiency savings' they will be short of workers to deliver the services. So services will also go on being cut - that's health, education, care of the elderly, everything they have promised to maintain.

Cuts will be tougher than Thatcher's

Opinion polls confirm that while there are many wanting a change, this does not necessarily mean wanting a Tory government. Disgust with the present Labour government cannot completely outweigh suspicion that a new Tory government will attack on the scale of Thatcher in the 1980s when unemployment trebled. We should be in no doubt what the next government will bring in, whichever it is. Darling's budget speech announced that the new spending review would be the "toughest in decades" and in a BBC interview he confirmed that this means a new Labour government's spending cuts would be "tougher and deeper" than Margaret Thatcher's, "What is non-negotiable is that borrowing is coming down by half over a four-year period." George Osborne is competing with the Chancellor on who can promise the deepest cuts after the election, and Nick Clegg has joined in the criticism of a budget that made no mention of the intended cuts.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies points out that spending increased 1.1% a year under Thatcher, three times the 0.4% pencilled in by the Chancellor for after the election: "if we subtract spending on welfare and debt interest then we estimate that the rest of public spending would be cut in real terms by an average of 1.4% a year compared to an average increase of 0.7% in the Thatcher era. We have not seen five years with an average annual real cut as big as this since the mid-1970s." This is also a useful reminder that the real effective cuts of the 1970s were more scathing than under Thatcher, although her government did its best to follow the example of its Labour predecessors.

Brutality of cuts - now and in the future

The contraction in the UK economy has already had a deep impact. Official figures for unemployment have marginally declined, but so have figures for those employed. The number of people working part-time (in many cases reluctantly) continues to climb. The number of people claiming Jobseekers' Allowance is higher now than at any time since Labour came to power in 1997.

The official figure for people who are ‘economically inactive' does include students, the long-term sick, unpaid carers and those who retire early, as well as those who are officially unemployed and the ‘discouraged' who have given up looking for work or have been bureaucratically barred from claiming JSA or other ‘benefits'. However, even when you allow for categories such as students (who might well have taken up study because of the poor prospects for employment) the current figure of more than 8 million, more than 1 in 5 of the working age population, the highest on record, is a stark condemnation of the capitalist economy's capacity to employ the class that creates most value in bourgeois society.

As for the impact of future cuts, bourgeois commentators have made no attempt to hide the staggering prospect of what's in store. Try this extract from an article by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books (11/3/10). "Broadly speaking, the circumstances are such that it shouldn't much matter who wins the election, not in economic terms. ... The reality is that the budget, and the explicit promises of both parties, imply a commitment to cuts of about 11 per cent across the board. Both parties, however, have said that they will ring-fence spending on health, education and overseas development. Plug in those numbers and we are looking at cuts everywhere else of 16 per cent. (By the way, a two-year freeze in NHS spending - which is what Labour have talked about - would be its sharpest contraction in 60 years.)

Cuts of that magnitude have never been achieved in this country. Mrs Thatcher managed to cut some areas of public spending to zero growth; the difference between that and a contraction of 16 per cent is unimaginable. The Institute for Fiscal Studies ... thinks the numbers are, even in this dire prognosis, too optimistic. ... The guesstimate for the cuts, if the ring-fencing is enforced, is from 18 to 24 per cent. What does that mean? According to Rowena Crawford, an IFS economist, quoted in the FT: ‘For the Ministry of Defence an 18 per cent cut means something on the scale of no longer employing the army.' The FT then extrapolates: ‘At the transport ministry, an 18 per cent reduction would take out more than a third of the department's grant to Network Rail; a 24 per cent reduction is about equivalent to ending all current and capital expenditure on roads. At the Ministry of Justice an 18 per cent reduction broadly equates to closing all the courts, a 24 per cent cut to shutting two-thirds of all prisons.'"

As it's clear that the state will continue to have an army, courts and prisons, the effect on those areas that will be cut will surely be even more dramatic.

Does the election matter?

Whoever wins the election, the next government will defend the national capital, by cutting jobs, reducing real wages, reducing services, and, when it's in the national interest, sending young soldiers to fight in imperialist adventures like Afghanistan. For workers there is nothing to choose between any of them. However the results do matter, and it is clear that the ruling class do not simply leave this to chance, not because there is any doubt that any of the serious contenders would carry out the necessary attacks, but because they want to prepare the ground to make it as hard as possible for the working class to resist them. Media stories about Brown the ‘ditherer', the Sun's support for the Tories, give some idea of how they are thinking. David Cameron's claim that Labour are in hock to the unions shows us why - they want us to think that we can rely on the unions and the left to resist the attacks that are being planned, and to think that voting in the election will make some difference, despite all experience to the contrary.

The working class also has to prepare - not by voting, not by apathy or cynicism, but by remembering all the attacks by governments of right and left, both here in Britain and abroad, over the last 40 years, and by discussing and drawing the lessons of the efforts to struggle against those attacks.   

Alex 2/4/10

A year and a half after the ‘credit crunch', the international working class is still reeling under the avalanche of attacks on its living standards by all governments, whether of the left or the right. But over this period it has not remained entirely passive as can be seen from a number of struggles which we have written about in our press - the refinery workers' strikes in Britain, the Tekel workers' strike in Turkey, or the moves towards unity between shipyard workers and unemployed in Vigo, Spain. These struggles have shown that workers have not lost the will to fight, nor have they forgotten about the need for solidarity, even in the face of vicious ideological campaigns aimed at stirring up national or sectional divisions. We should also remember the uprising of young proletarians in Greece in December 2008, which really scared the bourgeoisie, anxious that this bad example would spread across borders and into the working class as a whole. It's no accident that the eyes of the ruling class are on Greece and the reactions of the working class to the brutal austerity plans which have been imposed by the ‘Socialist' government and its backers in the European Union. This is a real test for the growing list of other states threatened with insolvency. Already proposed austerity plans have also provoked protests in other ailing economies like Portugal and Spain. And even if the working class still faces huge difficulties, especially in the face of redundancy plans which often make workers feel that strikes and demonstrations cannot lead anywhere, we can see that there is a gradual change in the social climate. In the last couple of months, for example, as well as the large-scale strikes in Greece recounted in the following article, we have seen demonstrations against the rising cost of living in Russia, despite the government declaring these gatherings illegal; occupations and demonstrations by American university students and teachers against cuts in the budget for university education, and the current strikes in the transport sector in the UK.

The following two texts both are both contributions to gaining a better grasp of the present dynamics of the class struggle on a global scale. The first is a report on the struggles against austerity measures in Greece, written by a group calling itself ‘Proles and Poor's Credit Rating Agency', formerly TPTG, whose analysis of the uprising in December 2008 we published in WR 328 (https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/328/greece [73]).This report is a first-hand account of the recent demonstrations and strikes against what it calls the "fiscal terrorism" aimed at the working class in Greece, a country which is being turned into a "laboratory of a new shock policy" that will no doubt be directed against other sections of the world working class in the near future. For reasons of space we have cut the first part of the article (on the economic crisis and the Greek state's dive into debt that underlie the austerity measures) and have shortened some of the narrative dealing with specific events, while retaining as much as possible of the general analysis which shows in particular the role of the Socialist and Stalinist parties and trade unions, which have retained overall control of the workers' response. The article gives a number of concrete examples of how the parties of the left and their union machines have kept workers' divided, collaborated directly with the police during the demonstrations, and sought to impose a nationalist framework on the movement. At the same time it shows that if these organisations have been able to retain this degree of control, it is to a large extent because the central battalions of the working class, faced with a crisis of unprecedented scale and intensity, are facing real difficulties in actively developing their own perspective and their own forms of organisation. A full version of the text can be found on libcom.org.

We are also publishing a report on workers' struggles in India in the recent period, written by our Indian section for a conference in India attended by several ICC sections (Philippines, Turkey, UK, and France as well as a sympathiser from Australia).

WR 3/4/10

So, in a climate of fiscal terrorism that has been orchestrated for some months now by the media, a state of emergency has been called in Greece in an effort by international capital and the Greek state to turn the country into a laboratory of a new shock policy. The huge ‘public debt' and the ‘imminent bankruptcy of the country' are the mottos used as efficient tools to terrorize and discipline the proletariat and legitimize the decrease of the direct and indirect wage and thus curb its expectations and demands in an exemplary neoliberal fashion of international proportions.

The mobilizations have been rather lukewarm so far and certainly do not correspond to the critical situation and the ferocity of the measures. There is a generalized feeling of impotence and paralysis but anger as well that cannot find a proper outlet. Certainly, there is a real discontent for the shock policy that the PASOK government is promoting (cuts on wages, cuts on benefits, more direct and indirect taxes, extension of retirement age, intensification of police control etc). One can trace that discontent in the everyday conversations in the work places; however, there is a prevailing fragile silence facing the dictatorship of the economy and the omnipotence of the ‘markets'. The ‘national unity' mantra is one of the government's favourite tools...

The union confederations, GSEE (the umbrella organization of the private sector unions) and ADEDY (the corresponding organization of the public sector) are totally controlled by the Socialist government and do their best to avoid any real resistance against the recent offensive....On the 10th of February there was the first strike called by ADEDY with a rather low participation of strikers from the public sector. We will try below to give a description of the demo in Athens on the 24th of February when the first general strike against austerity measures was called by GSEE and ADEDY. The estimation on the number of people that went on strike is around 2-2.5 million. In some sectors (ports, shipyards, oil refineries, construction industry, banks and public service companies) the participation ranged between 70-100%. In the public sector (education, health, public services and ministries, post offices) the participation was lower, ranging between 20% and 50%....

Two were the main features of this demo. The first is the noticeable participation of many immigrants not only ‘under the command' of left-wing organizations but also diffused in the body of the demo. ...The second feature is the street fighting that took place between riot police and protesters who did not necessarily come from the antiauthoritarian-anarchist milieu -in a lot of cases there was close combat, since the riot police have been ordered by the Socialist government to use less tear gas. There was breaking of bank fronts, looting of commercial shops (bookshops, department stores, supermarkets and cafes) and, though not generalized, they certainly gave a quite different tone to what one might expect from the usual GSEE-ADEDY strike demos. One incident in the end of the demo can maybe best convey this change of climate: as the protesters were marching down Panepistimiou St where Kolonaki, a posh district in the heart of Athens, starts, they saw that in Zonar's, a traditional bourgeois and very expensive café, dressed-up and prim customers were drinking champagne (!) and enjoying their expensive flavoured beverages. The enraged crowd invaded the café, smashed its window panes and soon cakes were distributed among them at a much more affordable price!

These features, in our opinion, show the great impact of December 2008 revolt on the way of protesting. A general approval of violent acts against cops and capitalist institutions like banks and stores was obvious during the demo. Actually, there were a lot of cases where demonstrators attacked the cops to prevent them from arresting ‘trouble-makers'.

... Last, we should mention a spectacular move by the Communist Party (actually by its workers' front called PAME) on the eve of the strike: they squatted the Stock-Exchange building early in the morning with a surrealist and rather unintelligible banner saying in English "Crisis pay the plutocracy". Their purpose was, in their words, to "show to the inspectors of the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF where the money is" - as if they did not know.....

On the 3rd of March the Socialist government announced the new measures for the ‘salvation of the country' including a 30% cut in the 13th and 14th salaries of public workers, a 12% cut in salary subsidies, increases in petrol, alcohol and tobacco taxes as well as cuts in education and health spending....Once again, the initiative for the strike on the 5th of March was taken by the CP which had called for a ‘general strike' on that day and a demo. ADEDY and GSEE followed with a 3-hour work stoppage, while other unions (both primary and secondary teachers' unions, public transport unions) called a day strike. The PAME demo gathered around 10,000 people and it ended before the other one had started. Anti-authoritarians and younger people had a more visible presence this time and the atmosphere was tense from the beginning at Syntagma Square near the Parliament where the Socialist Party was going to vote for the new measures.

After a while, the head of GSEE, Panagopoulos, made the mistake to try to speak to the crowd only to have first some yoghurt landed on him, then some water and coffee and finally punches...He was chased and beaten all the way to the entrance of the Parliament and then protected by the riot police. Soon an angry crowd gathered just below the building. The folklore Guards of the Parliament had to leave immediately and some fighting started between the enraged people and the riot squads.... When Glezos, an 88-year old SYRIZA member and a symbol of the national resistance to the Nazi occupation tried to prevent the riot police from arresting a young man, he was beaten and sprayed in the face and soon the fighting with the police was generalized. About three hundred or more people were throwing stones at them (mostly anti-authoritarians but not only) and the rest remained there shouting and cursing for some time until the riot police made a heavy attack trying to disperse the crowd. A refreshing incident occurred when some people took the microphones of the union confederation and chanted slogans against wage slavery and the cops that could be heard all over the square in the clouds of tear gas. ....The demo then started marching towards the Ministry of Labour, something that was criticized by many demonstrators as an effort on the part of the unionists to release the tension near the Parliament. However, spirits were still running high and so when the demo reached the building of the State Council, some demonstrators attacked the riot squad which was guarding it. Soon a huge crowd started throwing rocks and various objects against them chasing them inside the building. One of them, however, did not make it and was captured and almost lynched by the angered people. The incident, which points both to an acceptance of the escalation of violence even by people who would normally react differently and to the increasing hatred against police especially in those days, lasted some time because support riot squads were hindered from approaching by nearby laid-off workers of Olympic Airways. These workers, soon after the new measures were announced, occupied the State General Accountancy in Panepistimiou St and had been blocking the traffic up till the 12th of March with cars and dustbins......

The present conjuncture constitutes an ideal terrain for the activities of the CP since the propaganda of the government itself and of the mass media about the alleged imposition of the tough measures by EU, international markets and speculators seems to confirm its rhetoric about "exiting EU" and "resisting the monopolies and big capital", which it keeps repeating with religious devotion since the 80's. As one of the main political representatives of the working class (as a class of the capitalist mode of production and communication) inside the Greek state and its institutions, the CP proclaims the establishment of a nationalist ‘popular' economy where the working class will enjoy the merits of a social-democratic capitalism with a flavour of Stalinism. As a matter of fact, the actions of the CP ensure the entrapment of struggles into the limits of capitalist institutions, and what's more, into the most fetishized of them, elections and the parliament, since for the CP, voting for the party and getting organized in it constitutes the culmination of class struggle.

The most prominent characteristic of the CP's activism remains the complete separation of the mobilizations of its union organ (PAME) from the rest of the struggling proletarians. The demonstrations organized by PAME and the CP never come together with the demonstrations called by other workers' unions and student organizations. Although we are not in the position to know exactly what's happening inside the apparatuses of both the CP and PAME because of their completely secretive mode of organization, the experience we have from our participation in union assemblies shows that they exercise complete control upon their rank 'n' file. We are certain that actions are decided by the party leadership without a trace of rank 'n' file participation in the decisions...

It must be admitted that the level of class activity is low: neither have long-term strikes been organized by many sectors simultaneously nor there are daily militant massive demonstrations. In this context, PAME activities (occupations of public buildings such as the Ministry of Economics and the stock market, massive demonstrations and rallies -practices that have not been unusual for the CP since at least the mid 2000's) seem impressive, especially when they succeed to call first for a strike or a demo obliging GSEE and ADEDY to follow. It is possible that a plan for splitting GSEE and ADEDY and creating a third ‘independent' union confederation lies underneath this strategy. Of course, it goes without saying that if the situation gets out of hand by going beyond some 24-hour strikes on a weekly basis, that is to say if long-term strikes break out accompanied by a permanent proletarian presence and militant activity in the streets, the CP will again assume the role of the police by undermining the strikes it does not control, by calling its members off the streets and by trying to repress violently every radical activity. After all, this has been its standard practice since the fall of the dictatorship and they did exactly the same during the December 2008 rebellion.....

On the 5th of March, GSEE and ADEDY called for another 24 hour strike on Thursday the 11th of March, in response to the climate of a general yet passive discontent with the announced austerity measures, attempting to retain a grain of legitimacy. There are no definite figures available for the levels of participation in the strike, but we can say for sure that it was higher than the previous one (GSEE claims that participation in the strike reached 90%). This was also proved by the number of demonstrators which was almost double than the demo on the 24th of February. According to our estimations, a number of around 100,000 people participated in both demonstrations of PAME and GSEE-ADEDY (PAME organized a separate demonstration following its standard practice), even if the media estimate this number at around 20-25,000. The composition of the crowd was also slightly different since there were more university students, a few high school students and more young workers while immigrants were absent this time. Moreover, a large number of demonstrators coming from almost the entirety of the antiauthoritarian milieu participated in the GSEE-ADEDY demo, dispersing into its whole body.

Another distinctive characteristic of the demonstration was the different, far more offensive tactics of the police. More than five thousands cops tried to prevent an escalation of proletarian violence by closely following the demo from its both sides. Their goal was reached to a certain extent since relatively fewer people not coming from the anarchist-antiauthoritarian milieu supported the street-fighting or actively participated in clashes with the police...Furthermore, it must be noted that this time the leadership of the union confederations did not just openly cooperate with the police but they actually gave specific commands to the riot squads to stop the demonstrators on Patision avenue in order to take the lead of the demo and avoid possible conflicts with the rank ‘n' file and a repetition of the events of last Friday, when they received the (active) booing they deserve...

The composition of these last demos is different from the December 2008 demos, as expected. High school students did not show up at all, at least in recognizable blocks, except for a few ones in the last demo, but university students were present in the two last demos as more and more general assemblies are called. In general, apart from the students, the precarious, ‘lumpen', marginal segments of the class which was the dominant subject of the riots is understandably not present, since the point at issue, at least for the time being, is the fiscal terrorism imposed through the austerity measures threatening workers with more stable jobs and more to lose. So, what needs some explanation is rather the inertia showed by this part of the proletariat since its mobilizations so far have neither constituted a movement nor have corresponded to the present critical situation. The strikes have been called by the leaderships of either the confederations or the federations of the unions. Even where first-degree unions have called a strike, no mass extraordinary assemblies have preceded, which means that no rank 'n' file processes have been organized. The destructive and paralyzing influence of the Socialist unionists and the control they still have of the unions is still the major obstacle and can be illustrated with the following example. The employees of the National Printing Office occupied it on the 5th of March on the grounds that the new measures provide for an extra 30% cut of the income of the employees of the Ministry of the Interior. The occupation, however, was closed to anyone who "was not employed at the Ministry", as comrades who tried to visit them were told and were actually sent away. The Socialist union cadres who control the union decided to end the occupation in a hurry without even bringing the matter to the assembly with the argument that the government ‘promised' to omit the particular regulation -a decision that was met by anger but has not been reversed. The occupation of the State General Accountancy by laid-off workers of Olympic Airways had the same sad ending. They are mostly technicians that have not been paid for 3 months now after Olympic Airways had been privatized, or laid-off workers that were promised to get transferred to other workplaces. In the first day of the occupation they kept an official as a hostage for several hours and in the same evening they beat and chased a riot squad away. Although they were open to discussions and seemed determined to keep the blockade as long as it needed, since, in their own words, they had "nothing to lose", they let no one into the occupied building. After a 10-day occupation, their Socialist (and right-wing) representatives decided to accept the government's ‘promise' to have a special committee formed to look into the matter! In this case, the Socialist unionists acted as conveyor belts of the government's threats against the workers and the Public Prosecutor's order to have them arrested.

As we had already noted last year in relation to the inability of the December rebellion to extend to the workplaces, the lack of autonomous forms of organization and new contents of struggle beyond the trade unionist demands seem to weigh heavily down on the proletarians in an era of ‘public debt' terrorism. What's more, the limits of that rebellion with its minority character are even more obvious now and soon those who had stayed out of it will probably discover that they will need almost to start a new one to get themselves out of this mess.

Proles and Poor's Credit Rating Agency, aka TPTG 14/3/10

This article in the print edition of World Revolution has already been published online here [75]

In March relations between the US and Israel reached a 30 year low. US Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel trying to push forward the ‘Israel/Palestine peace process', but the announcement of the building of another 1600 homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem led to the withdrawal of the Palestinian Authority. This slap in the face for the US brought a blunt response from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "As Israel's friend, it is our responsibility to give credit when it is due and to tell the truth when it is needed". The US does not agree with more building in East Jerusalem, as President Obama re-emphasised when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited Washington at the end of March.

This public row appears to demonstrate that the Obama regime is going to ‘stand up' to Israel's increasingly unpredictable actions, after the Bush administration's automatic backing for Israel. The new White House team looks like it's trying to advance the Israel/Palestine peace process and work towards a long-term settlement. That, at least, is how the media has been presenting it.

Of course, the Obama team would dearly love to bring about a settlement because the Israel/Palestine conflict is a festering sore in its side. But it's not because the US state want to bring ‘peace and good will' to the Middle East, but because the current impasse is undermining its wider imperialist strategy in the area, which is to impose its control over the region.

The fact that, a year after coming to power, the Obama team has been faced with such an act of insubordination by its ally underlines the stark assessment made of its inability to impose its will made by the International Crisis Group (a think-tank that offers advice on ‘resolving' conflicts)."Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking in 2009 never really got off the ground, as symbolised by the Obama Administration's inability to bring the parties to the negotiating table. The US was unable to achieve either a comprehensive settlement or steps by Arab states to begin normalising relations with Israel. By the end of the year, the peace process was at an impasse, with both sides increasingly questioning the viability of an end-of-conflict two-state solution". (ICG Annual Report 2010.) This is a damning indictment of what was supposed to be a newly invigorated peace offensive.

Why has Obama had such a lack of success?

The new president came into office insisting that he would usher in a new era of US engagement with the rest of the world after the eight years of the Bush administration. Central to this ambition was the new emphasis on peace making between the ruling classes of Israel and Palestine. Along with the US ‘withdrawal' from Iraq - an odd form of withdrawal that leaves 100,000 US troops still stationed there - this was meant to revamp the image of America around the world: from warmonger to peacemaker.

Is this failure down to Netanyahu increasingly operating as a loose cannon? Has this one man and his coalition allies managed to scupper the ambitions of the world's only superpower and its bright new smiley figurehead? No!

It's true that Netanyahu's intransigence over the building of new homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem, and his reluctance to comply with US demands that he makes a real effort to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority dominated by Fatah (and even Hamas in Gaza), are an obstacle to US ambitions to clean up its image and its ability to engage with other imperialist powers in the region. Why should the Syrian or Iranian ruling classes limit their own imperialist ambitions when the US is not even able to bring to heel an ally that is totally dependent upon it? The central question however, is why does Netanyahu feel able to defy the world's only superpower?

Netanyahu and his six-party coalition can see that the US is weak. In the Bush years the US let Israeli imperialism pursue its ambitions in the Lebanon, towards the two Palestinian statelets (and their regional backers Syria and Iran) as part of a policy that tried to impose the US's will militarily. This policy failed in Iraq and is looking increasingly like failing in Afghanistan. It is one of the reasons Bush's team was replaced by Obama's. But the new team is still faced with the same situation. In this context the current factions that make up the Israeli government are now more confident about defending the Israeli national interest, with much less concern for the consequences.

Other fractions of the bourgeoisie have criticised Netanyahu's headstrong approach, especially towards the US, but they are all united in the desire to defend the national interest. This means confrontation with its regional rivals, above all Iran. The other fractions may want to do this through cooperation with the US, but, faced with the weakness of the world's policeman - exemplified by its inability to impose its diktat over Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world - their arguments are weakened. And the arguments for pursuing Netanyahu's line, even if its means problems with the US, are being strengthened. After all, what is the US going to do to Israel? Despite its unruliness it's still the main ally of the US in an increasingly unstable region.

Cauldron of tensions

Other regional powers such as Syria and Iran are also trying to take advantage of the US's inability to impose its will.

Iran is the starkest example. Its determination to develop nuclear weapons has been reinforced by the US's weakness. The US has very limited options. A direct military strike is something that it wants to avoid while it still has Afghanistan on its hands. In addition, the situation is pushing Israeli imperialism into an increasingly belligerent posture, even allowing for the already significant weight of the military apparatus in the Israeli state. Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear power station in 1981, and is part of the international propaganda campaign to justify a pre-emptive strike to stop Iran getting nuclear weaponry.

The US is thus faced with a double challenge. It wants to stop the development of Iranian nuclear weapons and at the same time stop Israel further undermining its position and making the situation much worse by attacking Iran.

The influential US journal Foreign Affairs summed up the prospect facing the US. "The advent of a nuclear Iran -- even one that is satisfied with having only the materials and infrastructure necessary to assemble a bomb on short notice rather than a nuclear arsenal -- would be seen as a major diplomatic defeat for the United States. Friends and foes would openly question the U.S. government's power and resolve to shape events in the Middle East. Friends would respond by distancing themselves from Washington; foes would challenge U.S. policies more aggressively". (‘After Iran gets the Bomb' Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010.)

Syria is one of these foes. As another report by the International Crisis Group underlined, while the ‘West' (ie the US) is looking to Syria to engage with it, the Syrian ruling class is waiting to see how much clout the US actually still has.

"The West wants to know whether Syria is ready to fundamentally alter its policies - loosen or cut ties to Iran, Hamas and Hizbollah; sign a peace deal with Israel - as a means of stabilising the region. Syria, before contemplating any fundamental strategic shift, wants to know where the region and its most volatile conflicts are headed, whether the West will do its part to stabilise them and whether its own interests will be secured.

From Syria's vantage point, there is good reason to cling to the status quo. For almost four decades, it has served Damascus well. Despite a turbulent and often hostile neighbourhood, the regime has proved resilient. It has used ties to various groups and states to amass political and material assets, acquiring a regional role disproportionate to its actual size or resources. One does not readily forsake such allies or walk away from such a track record." (‘Reshuffling the Cards? (I) Syria's Evolving Strategy' ICG Middle East and North Africa Report 14 December 2009)

Faced with a US that is looking increasingly weak in the Middle East, and an Israeli imperialism that is increasingly inclined to throw its weight around, the Syrian bourgeoisie is going to have to receive some good offers from the US to side with it. However, it is also not very keen on a nuclear Iran. It is allied with Iran in its confrontation with Israel as their mutual rival, but they also have conflicts over Iraq and, more widely, their competing influence in the region.

This cauldron of tensions is being stirred up further by the other major powers. French imperialism has been developing its relations with Syria, while German imperialism has been courted by Israel. In March a very high level Israeli delegation of ministers visited Berlin. China and Russia have also been involved with Iranian imperialism.

Deathly prospects

It's not because of Netanyahu or because of Israeli imperialism as a whole that the US has failed to impose itself in the region.

Unlike a bourgeois think tank like the International Crisis Group that wants to solve capitalism's insoluble problems, the ICC analyses the situation in order to understand the direction imperialist conflicts are leading. We can see that, faced with the weakness of the US, it is trying to impose itself more and more brutally. The diplomatic quarrel with Israel is an expression of this. It had to make a display of slapping down Israel in order to show the rest of the world that it was serious. The fact that the Israeli bourgeoisie is still going ahead with its building projects is yet another blow to US credibility. It is also another reason for regional powers to push ahead in the drive to satisfy their imperialist appetites. If the US cannot maintain order in the area then all states are going to be set against each other. In the Middle East this has the terrifying prospect of the use of nuclear weapons either by an increasingly desperate Israel or by an Iranian imperialism grown more confident with the reduction of Iraqi influence.

At the beginning of April Israel carried out a series of bombing raids on Gaza in retaliation for the killing of the first Israeli soldiers in the area in over a year, and the renewal of rocket attacks from Gaza. This is the most serious assault since Israel's 22-day offensive against Gaza in late 2008/early 2009. Israel has threatened to further escalate the air strikes. Iranian President Ahmadinejad  warned Israel that any further attacks would bring it "closer to certain death." None of the imperialisms in the area are holding back as the US is showing itself less and less capable of policing the region.  

Phil 3/4/10

The Greek state is on the edge of a precipice. The international media talk non-stop about its bankruptcy. The journalists like talking about the ‘Greek tragedy'. But the dramatic reality of the situation is being felt most cruelly by the workers, the unemployed, pensioners, young people who have precarious jobs or are trying to gain their qualifications...in short, the working class.

The Greek proletariat is facing a massive attack on its living standards. The latest austerity package, aimed at cutting Greece's public deficit to less than 3% by 2014 (it currently stands at 13.6%), is a precondition for Greece receiving the massive injection of euros it needs from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Among the measures contained in the package: a pay freeze for all public sector workers, accompanied by pay cuts for some and redundancies for others. A cap on annual bonus payments, but the ceiling raised for the number of workers that companies can lay off every month. Retirement age put off from 61 to 65 for men. VAT increased by 2%. Indirect taxes - including those on alcohol, fuel and cigarettes - to go up by 10%.

And the big fear of all the political leaders and economic experts is that the situation in Greece will spread throughout Europe. On May 10 The Guardian reported that European governments "approved a 500 billion euro deal to save the euro after 11 hours of talks that took place against the prospect of the single currency drowning in a tidal wave of debt and default fears, and even a question mark over the whole European Union".

Because Greece is anything but an isolated case. Portugal and Spain are next in line, their capacity to deal with their public debt seen as highly uncertain. The Portuguese government has just announced a new austerity plan, with similar ‘remedies' to those in Greece: wage cuts, pension cuts, benefit cuts. Rumania has just announced a 25% reduction in wages for public sector workers. Italy and Ireland are in growing difficulties, as is France. And the fact that Britain is outside the euro zone is not going to spare it from the need for drastic cuts - all the parties standing in the election were united on that point and the desperate need to reduce the public deficit is the first item on the new coalition government's agenda.

So much for all the talk about Greece's problems being down to its particularly dishonest politicians, or their spoilt, privileged public sector workers - in short, to problems specific to Greece or the ‘Greek character'. Greece is cracking up because the world economy is stuck in a profound, a historic crisis. All the states on the planet are groaning under huge piles of debt, and the most powerful economy in the world, the USA, has the most gigantic debts of all. Faced with a global crisis of overproduction which burst to the surface at the end of the 60s but which has deepened in the most spectacular manner since 2007, the ruling class has more and more resorted to the drug of credit to keep the world economy on its feet.

The whole world bourgeoisie is very afraid. It is seeing its system going under, and it is running out of political and economic options. And it afraid not only of economic collapse, but also of its social consequences: that the exploited will refuse to make the sacrifices they are demanding, that they will resist, that they will reject the whole logic of capitalism in crisis. Greece is a particular concern for them because not only is it leading the way towards economic disaster, but its working class is setting a very bad example by openly protesting against the austerity measures in a series of general strikes and massive street demonstrations.

But the working class - and this also applies to the workers of Greece, whose struggles also face many difficulties and obstacles (see the article on p4) - also experiences a great deal of fear when it sees the disastrous state of the world economy. How are we to resist, how can we win our demands, when not only this or that company, but entire states are succumbing to bankruptcy? Problems on this scale can have a paralysing effect. But they also make it clear that capitalism has no future, that this system of exploitation is irrational and inhuman. And above all they reveal that the state - whatever colour it paints itself, whether blue, yellow, red or green, is the worst enemy of the working class. It's the state which is imposing all these austerity attacks, and which sends in its repressive forces when people fight back, as we have seen time after time in Greece.

The future belongs to the class struggle!

Confronted with this state monster, which expresses the power and political unity of the bourgeoisie as a class, an isolated worker can only feel powerless.

What can a handful of individuals do when their school, hospital, or factory closes? Nothing, if they remain isolated! But today, the entire working class is being hit at the same time - in all countries, in the private sector as well as the public sector, among the employed as well as the unemployed, the young as well as the retired. All of us are facing a future of poverty not because there is not the means to produce the necessities of life for everyone, but because the laws of capitalism, its drive to compete, to sell, to make a profit, have become a deadly obstacle to the rational use of humanity's productive powers.

The whole working class has the same interests and the same enemy - the bourgeoisie and its state. It is only by fighting as a class, through organising and extending our struggles on a massive scale, that we can resist the attacks of the ruling class and develop the perspective of a new society where there will be no more ‘national debt crisis' because there will be no more need for markets, money or nation states.   Pawel 29/4/10

After the election circus we have ‘change', ‘a new way of doing politics', the coalition government, all the better to push through the austerity cuts that all major parties agreed were necessary.

This was a very eventful election, even before the resulting hung parliament: the 3 prime ministerial debates, the chancellor debate, the efforts to encourage young people to vote. There was all sorts of chatter about Nick Clegg and whether the Labour Party would be pushed into third place. On election night the pictures of hundreds of people queuing up outside polling stations for over an hour - only to be turned away when they closed at 10pm - made it look as if there was a real enthusiasm for the election like the first in post-apartheid South Africa. All this effort produced a rise in turnout to 65%, partially reversing the low levels of the last three elections, a small victory for the ruling class.

Then there were five days of negotiation to produce the Tory-LibDem coalition, the first coalition in Britain since the Second World War. Out goes the ‘third way' of the Blair years, in comes the ‘new way' of coalition and cooperation in the national interest. David Cameron finds he has friends everywhere, as when he visited Scotland and Alex Salmond of the SNP. There will even be a referendum on a new system of voting

The new government has promised fixed term parliaments. Most importantly, the coalition has promised to run for a full term, 5 years of stable government in the national interest, allowing it to make a start on cuts and austerity measures immediately without having to worry about delaying or disguising them before a new election - whether or not they can actually last the distance.

The national interest = austerity for the working class

We have a new coalition in the national interest. It has announced it will bring forward £6bn cuts in a new budget this year. This is on top of the £11bn ‘efficiency savings' already hidden in the last Labour budget. We don't know where they will fall yet, but this is much more believable than all the promises to maintain front line services. The fact is we always knew the new government would bring in austerity measures sooner or later, with cuts and tax increases, because for capitalism there is no choice. With public sector borrowing at £163.4bn, a current budget deficit £113.7bn and public sector net debt (including financial interventions) 62% of national income, austerity is the job they are elected to do. We have it on very good authority. Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England has called the planned cuts "strong and powerful" and "sensible". The markets are showing small signs that they view the British state as a little less of a risky investment, and Richard Lambert director of the CBI notes "Business wants to see a stable government with the authority to take the tough decisions that will be required to keep the economic recovery on track and to get a grip on the fiscal deficit."

“I agree with Nick. You two make the cuts, and Labour will pretend to oppose them”

We must wait till the autumn for a full spending review to know what gets cut, but pensions are surely in the firing line with the establishment of an independent commission to review the affordability of public sector pensions. And watch out for other benefit cuts with the emphasis on ‘welfare to work', also a concern of the previous government. Unemployment has just risen to 2.51m, the highest official figure since 1994, with the prospect of rising further. The government is not short of advice: 28 economists who advise the government have suggested a rise in VAT to 20%. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has looked at what could be gained by eliminating zero rate VAT, among other measures. Meanwhile the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has estimated that the government will need to impose tax increases of the order of an extra 6p in the pound to reduce the deficit to 3% by 2020. There are predictions that National Insurance contributions for employees will go up, but not for employers. Whichever measures are taken will hit the working class hard.

It's not just in Britain. The IMF has told developed nations "it is now urgent to start putting in place measures to ensure that the increase in deficits and debts resulting from the crisis... does not lead to fiscal sustainability problems". Austerity packages have recently been announced not only in Greece but also Spain, Portugal and Rumania.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg are in office, but the overall direction of their policies does not follow from manifesto promises or voters' desire but is determined by the needs of the national economy. As such the new government represents the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, like its Labour predecessor.

Beware the Labour opposition

Meanwhile the Labour Party can make the most of its leadership election to show itself returning to its ‘core values', to overcome the fact that it ‘lost touch' with its supporters. It will be able to renew its ‘radical' image in opposition. Perhaps we will forget that Darling had announced that the next round of cuts need to be "tougher and deeper" than under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, that Labour-appointed management consultants recommended cutting the NHS workforce by 10%, the record number of young people out of work, the rise in the pension age... They may hope we have already forgotten or never knew about the Wilson and Callaghan governments' wage restraint, real cuts, and rising unemployment.

If we forget all this, then they can present us with a false perspective of the possibility of improvements through support for the Labour Party. But the history of the last 100 years has shown that in government the Labour Party, just like Tories and Liberals, will do exactly what is demanded by state of the capitalist economy. In opposition, Labour also has a very important role to play, making it look as though there is a real ‘alternative' within capitalism.

How can we react?

The current economic crisis, the real master of our fates, is neither a natural disaster nor the result of corruption or mismanagement by this or that individual or institution (however much that goes on). It is a sign that capitalism has no future to offer humanity but more misery.

We cannot vote it out. Nor can we just lie down and put up with what they have in store for us. Even election fever has not been able to hide widespread discontent among workers, as we can see with the disputes of BA cabin crew, rail maintenance and signal workers. With the new cuts workers can only get more angry. At present the bosses are able to keep most workers' militancy under control with a number of measures: legal injunctions used against BA and railworkers; threats and bullying as in the withdrawal of BA travel perks. The unions are also able to keep workers from getting together, as with the postal workers last year with different offices on strike at different times; and wear them down with on-off strikes and negotiations. Postal workers remain unhappy with the deal imposed on them.

The class struggle cannot stay at this level. As more attacks come in, and as they are more openly the work of the state, there will be more disputes going on at the same time, posing questions about the overall unity of the whole working class. Questions that must be answered in both more massive and united struggles and in the effort to understand the perspective capitalism has in store for us and how we can resist it, the perspective for putting an end to this capitalist system and all its misery.   WR 15/5/10

In World Revolution 333 [83] we said the most important thing about the 2010 elections. "This time the big issue is not who will win, not even how many people will bother to vote, but how to reduce the deficit over the next few years - how to make the working class pay by cutting jobs, pay and services."

The material situation facing British capitalism is hardly up for debate. All the main parties, despite their efforts, cannot hide the reality of the economic crisis and admit that the next government's cuts will be tougher and deeper than Thatcher's in the 1980s. The little parties - both left and right - who say that capitalism can be run for the benefit of the majority of the population are liars, fantasists, or, mostly, both.

Yet, while the state of the economy is a known quantity, and the austere implications for the working class under a new government are devastating, the political carnival is not obviously leading toward a particular result. The TV debates, the talk of a hung parliament, the emergence of the Liberal Democrats, the fluctuating polls - these are all calculated to draw people into the electoral game, to convince us that our vote could count.

The economic reality we know. What has not yet been revealed is the new shape of the political apparatus of the British ruling class.

Each issue of WR is produced at the beginning of the month. For us to do this at the start of May would be redundant. Everything in WR 333 remains valid up until the election, and after it we want to rapidly analyse what the changes in the political scene say about the line-up of the bourgeoisie. This is not because we are passive consumers of the parliamentary pantomime, but because the British bourgeoisie, at the political level, is one of the most important in the world, and revolutionaries have a responsibility to put forward their understanding of the manoeuvres and conflicts within the capitalist class, the dominant class in modern society.

So, we can tell all our readers and subscribers that WR 334 will be produced in mid-May, and, following on that, WRs 335 and 336 in the middle of June and July respectively. Of course, each issue will continue to be concerned with the whole range of issues facing the working class: the class struggle, the economic crisis, imperialist conflict, the internationalist milieu - as well as the particular spasm of the bourgeoisie we are seeing in this episode of the democratic soap opera.

WR 23/4/10.

What follows is an extract from a report on the British situation presented to a meeting of the ICC in Britian in early April this year. It focuses on the real state of the economy, against all the falsehoods heard before, during and after the recent general election.

According to the bourgeoisie,[1] Britain moved out of recession at the end of 2009 with the final quarter seeing growth of 0.4% (revised upwards in March 2010 from the original estimate of 0.1% and the second estimate of 0.3%). The stock market has been rising, house prices are increasing[2] and unemployment has fallen.

The peak to trough fall of 6.2% (from 1st quarter 2008 to 3rd quarter 2009) makes this recession similar to that of the early 1980s and worse than that of the early 1990s. The growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 was largely due to a 0.4% growth in the service sector. Car sales grew by 5.4%, driven upwards by the car scrappage scheme.

The production sector has been the most affected by the recession, registering a peak to trough decline of 13.8% between the fourth quarter in 2007 and the third quarter of 2009. The 0.4% growth in the fourth quarter 2009 was led by the capital goods sector responding to increased demand from abroad and from state infrastructure projects,[3] although the rate of growth is low in comparison to the total decline of 17.1%.

State and private consumption have underpinned the recovery while capital investment and trade have been negative factors, underlining that debt is both the cause and the solution to the present crisis and that the structural problems of the British economy are unchanged. Much has been made of the fact that the increase in the public sector borrowing requirement may not be as massive as first thought but the level of about 12% of GDP or £167bn is still large and on a par with that of Greece. Overall government debt is predicated by the government itself to rise from 54% of GDP this year to 75% by 2014/15.

Inflation has recently begun to rise as the temporary VAT cut ended and fuel prices increased. In January the Consumer Prices Index hit 3.5% and the Retail Prices Index (which includes mortgage repayments) 3.7%.

In March the Government forecast increases in GDP of 1-1.5% this year rising to 3-3.5% in 2011/12 and to 3.25-3.75 the year after. Other forecasters are not so sanguine: "However, the pick-up will be slow with GDP projected to grow by slightly more than 1% in 2010 reflecting strong headwinds from balance sheet adjustments, a still weakening labour market and fiscal tightening. In 2011 the recovery will gain momentum, but resource utilisation will remain low and the unemployment rate is projected to reach 9.5%. Inflation is likely to remain below the 2% target for an extended period."[4]

The immediate apparent improvement is the result of state intervention, the main elements of which were:

- cuts in interest rates to 0.5%. Many banks have kept the rates they charge for borrowing high, so making vast amounts of money and limiting the impact on the economy;

- nationalisations and bail outs, including Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley and the Lloyds/HBOS merger as well as the billions of pounds in guarantees given to banks;

- quantitative easing - reached a total of £200bn but rather than stimulating the economy through loans to small businesses it has been argued that this money has simply been used to resume gambling on the stock exchange and explains the increases in the stock market;

- the VAT cut and car scrappage scheme are seen as contributing significantly to the increase in GDP at end of 2009 - both have now ended.

Fig. 1 - GDP Growth

Source: Office for National Statistics

Structural issues

In previous reports we have looked at the range of structural issues that affect the British economy. In particular we noted the relatively low level of productivity and the consequence that the bourgeoisie relied on increasing the absolute rate of exploitation as the basis of the ‘boom' of the 1990s. The latest official report on productivity[5] shows that the productivity gap with rivals such as the US, France and Germany has been reduced but still remains and that one of the factors in this in the lack of investment in research and development and skills.

But such structural issues, which also include the deficit in Britain's balance of trade, are actually only symptoms of the real contradictions at the heart of capitalism: the falling rate of profit and overproduction. When British capitalism moved from manufacture into finances it did so in order to be able to grab as much surplus value as possible. The same necessity has driven production to ever-cheaper locations, financial capital to ever more complex structures and fuelled repeated bouts of speculation. Has the present crisis changed any of this?

There has certainly been a massive destruction of capital[6] and we can see signs of further concentration in car making and the finance sector and it is probable that this will continue in these and other sectors. Is this likely to be sufficient to alter the organic composition of capital and allow an improvement in the rate of profit?

This might improve the competitiveness of certain industries, but, from the Luxemburgist position, the question would be posed of where the demand would come from. Accepting that debt has been used to create an artificial market and that the massive extension and increasing fragility of this market (such as the sub-prime loans) was in large part behind the crisis, what is the perspective of debt fuelling a recovery since it has been massively increased just to prevent the whole edifice from collapsing? In Britain government debt has quadrupled in the last three to four years and personal debt hit an unprecedented high level just before the crisis broke into the open. Today the state is planning a decade of austerity to control the government debt and personal debt, which largely fuelled the boom of the 1990s, is no longer increasing as people, by choice or otherwise, reduce their spending (although the debt remains at £1,464bn[7]).

In short, the fundamental contradictions remain. At best they have been controlled for a moment only to return with renewed force in the future. That said, capitalism is not finished and while it survives it must find some way to grow. Growth figures around the world are turning positive, global forecasts are being revised upwards and the infernal machine lurches forward.

More immediately, it is clear that the crisis in Britain has moved into a new phase, the emergency measures that dominated in 2008-9 have been able to head off the collapse of the finance sector that was feared. The recovery may be weak but, for the time being at least, the bourgeoisie has saved its own skin. Now it is time for the working class to pay the price.

The impact of the recession on the working class

Unemployment has been growing since the middle of 2008 but has recently shown a slight reduction: "The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 per cent on the quarter to reach 7.8 per cent for the three months to January 2010. This was the first quarterly fall in the unemployment rate since the three months to May 2008. The number of unemployed people fell by 33,000 over the quarter to reach 2.45 million. There has not been a larger quarterly fall in the number of unemployed people since the three months to July 2007. However, the number of people unemployed for more than 12 months increased by 61,000 over the quarter to reach 687,000, the highest figure since the three months to August 1997."[8]

The government has boasted about how unemployment has not increased as much in this country as in others, presenting this as a tribute to its economic skill and human compassion. In fact it is partly due to fiddling the figures and partly to the working class accepting cuts in hours and cuts or freezes in pay as the price of hanging onto a job.

The changes to the way unemployment statistics are calculated are familiar to us. One phenomenon of this recession is the role that education has played. Of the 241,000 increase in the number of working age people recorded as inactive, 217,000 were accounted for by young people going to higher education - a route that is likely to become much harder in the face the massive cuts recently announced in funding.

There was a reduction of 2.9% in total hours worked in 2008 (although this includes the impact of the increase in unemployment). Full time employment has declined while part time working has increased (between the end of 2007 and the end of 2008 full time employment declined by 0.5%, or 100,000 people, while part time work increased by 0.8% or 83,000 people[9]). The rate of increase of wages declined from over 3.5% in January 2007 to 3% in March 2009. This decline was most marked in manufacturing where the rate of increase went from just over 3.5% in January 2007 to just over 1% in March 2009. Taking account of inflation real pay has gone down and at the end of March it was reported that average pay declined by 0.5% during 2009.[10]

This is only a continuation of what the working class has experienced over the last thirty years. For example real earnings growth has been kept low over the last two decades and the increase in unit wage costs forced down to nearly zero. This ‘flexibility' of the labour market, so beloved by politicians of all stamps, and presented now as one of the country's strengths, is nothing but a euphemism for the erosion of pay and conditions and the growth of insecurity of employment that was the main fruit of the attacks under Thatcher and her successors in New Labour. This legacy is still with the working class; it is experienced every day in work and is expressed through the tensions and stresses that dominate so many working lives. It is the experience of the working class worldwide.

An indication of the real cost of this flexibility was provided in a recent study of the impact of the recession on mental health. This found that 71% of people who have lost a job in the past year have experienced symptoms of depression, with those aged 18-30 most affected. Around half said they have experienced stress or anxiety.[11]

Perspectives

The attacks on the working class will continue and will be both material and ideological.

The full extent of the material attacks is being hidden until after the election. Today there is a phoney war as the parties posture about who will cut the quickest, the furthest or the cleverest, all the while preserving ‘frontline' services. Labour alternately claims the mantle of Thatcher, promising to outdo her cuts, and tries to frighten workers with her memory. The Tories veer between soft cop and hard cop, promising to start cutting immediately while protecting the NHS. The Liberals for their part posture as the sternest and most realistic of cutters, safe in the knowledge they won't actually have to do anything. The forecasts, by such as the IFS, talk of a decade of austerity with annual cuts twice those under Thatcher.

The scale of these attacks will necessitate an equally large ideological offensive, especially as it will not be possible to hide the disparity between the resources devoted to bailing out the ruling class with the attacks on the working class. There is a danger that this will have an impact on the consciousness of the working class; hence the current strategy of blaming the bankers, while actually doing nothing. The nationalist and racist card will certainly continue to be played with the likes of UKIP, the BNP and the English Defence League tacitly being allowed to develop with the mainstream media drip-feeding more or less explicitly racist stories. The advance of decomposition that is likely to result from cuts will give scope for many campaigns that are likely to be more virulent than those seen to date about delinquent children, single mothers, benefits scroungers etc.   WR 4/4/10

[1]. Most of the data in this section is taken from the Economic and Labour Market Review for March 2009 published by ONS.

[2]. Prices dropped from the second half of 2007 until March 2009 and have risen since then (albeit with a dip in February) bringing prices back to where they were in August 2008 and making up a substantial amount of the overall decline. The current inflation rate for house prices is 9%. However, the context of this is of a relatively low level of overall sales with a significant decline in the number of houses being built, suggesting that the current increase in prices may be the result of a tightening of supply. (Source: Nationwide House Price Index, March 2010)

[3]. In the year to February 2010 public sector net investment was £37.2bn, which is 27% higher than for the same period of 2008/9. (Source: IFS Public Finance Bulletin, March 2010).

[4]. OECD Economic Outlook 86, November 2009. The forecasts for GDP are broadly consistent with those of a range of independent forecasters of 1.2% in 2010 and 2% in 2011 (see Forecast for the UK Economy, HM Treasury, March 2010).

[5]. Productivity in the UK 7 - Securing long-term prosperity, HM Treasury 2007.

[6]. It has been reported that economists have worked out the total of lost production for the world economy is $60tn and for the UK £1.8tn, "more than the current annual output of the economy". The article did not cite the source of this calculation. Guardian 01/04/10.

[7]. Credit Action, Debt facts and figures, April 2010

[8]. ONS 17/03/10

[9]. The Impact of the Recession on the Labour Market, ONS May 2009.

[10]. Guardian 30/03/10

[11]. Guardian 01/04/10

British imperialism is at an impasse. Humiliated and all but thrown out of Iraq, failing in Afghanistan and ignored when it tries to take the lead internationally, as at the recent Copenhagen climate change summit, it turns up the volume of propaganda to hide the reality. The deaths of the young men and women slaughtered in Helmand Province are spun into a cynical spectacle about the sacrifice and heroism of ‘our boys'. The reality of the century-long decline of British capitalism since it ceased to be the dominant economic and military power in the world once again confronts the British ruling class and forces it to reassess its imperialist strategy.

Imperialist and economic decline

There are two main causes of the current impasse. The first is the failure of the strategy pursued by British imperialism since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989. The loosening of the order imposed by the Cold War meant that all powers saw the opportunity to assert their own interests. For the majority of the British ruling class this meant trying to pursue an independent line between the US and Europe, which was perceived to be dominated by Germany. This saw some initial success during the 1990s where Britain joined the US in the first Iraq war and worked alongside France during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia to oppose both Germany and the US. However, the ultimate result was that Britain found itself increasingly distrusted and squeezed between the two.

The offensive launched by the US after the destruction of 9/11 led Britain to position itself closer to the US. This change in tactics had two results. On the one hand, it resulted in Britain being caught in the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan and being increasingly sidelined by its erstwhile friends and allies. It also resulted in Britain becoming a target of terrorist attacks at home. On the other hand, it reopened the divide in the British ruling class that came to the surface during the last years of John Major's government and which was one of the reasons New Labour came to power in 1997.

Blair's attempt to gain advantage from following in the wake of US imperialism was a failure. When Brown took over his attempts to return to the independent policy of the 1990s through the appointment of advisors who had opposed or been critical of the Iraq war merely annoyed the Americans.

The second cause of the impasse has been Britain's declining economic strength, which has forced it to scale back its ambitions. For example, in recent years the planned defence budget has included an increase of 1.5 per cent per year in real terms, to £34 billion for 2008/9, £35.3 billion for 2009/10 and £36.9 billion for 2010/2011. However, defence inflation runs considerably ahead of the overall inflation rate and in 2008/9 there was already a deficit of £2bn that led to a series of delays in planned expenditure. This has not stopped the ruling class from trying to assert itself, from ‘punching above its weight' as it's often put. One result of this strategy has been that the young people recruited into the British army are sent out without protective equipment, in vehicles that cannot withstand roadside bombs and lacking helicopter support. But, of course, for the armed forces, human beings are always expendable..

Looking for a way out

The current impasse is the reason why, other than in patriotic propaganda, there is largely silence over foreign policy. This cannot last. The British ruling class, like every ruling class, is compelled to defend its interests against every other power. They are all rivals. Alliances, even when as seemingly stable as during the cold war, are only ever transitory.

During the election the parties had little to say except platitudes. But beyond the electoral circus a real discussion has begun. Chatham House, the think tank that allows academic, military and political figures to discuss foreign policy confidentially, has begun a review while the new government will begin a Strategic Defence Review this year. Within parts of the bourgeoisie there is recognition that Britain's position has declined. An article in the Financial Times (28/4/10) reports one participant at a recent Chatham House discussion saying that "the curtain is falling...on a 400-year old global adventure" and that the forthcoming defence cuts will mark the end of Britain's pretensions.

The same article also quotes the Director of Chatham House on the pressures facing Britain: "the accelerating shift from west to east in the global balance of economic power, the inevitable deep cuts that will need to be made in Britain's military and diplomatic capabilities, a more ambivalent relationship with the US and uncertainty about the European Union's future international influence and capacities." What this underlines is that future British imperialist policy will have to be based on responding to events beyond its control. This is the situation of every minor power.

The pretensions of Blair that Britain can in any way shape the international situation have been utterly refuted. The ‘special relationship' with the US meant American predominance in the period of the Cold War, but hardly anything ever since. It was interesting to see the rapidity of Obama's congratulations to Cameron, as well as Hague's rush to meet with Secretary of State Clinton, but not clear what significance to put on this burst of diplomacy. There has always been a Conservative tendency to be pro-US and Eurosceptic, but this has to be weighed against the LIbDem enthusiasm for all things European. In this the coalition is no different from individual parties that have factions which look either across the Atlantic or the Channel for alliances or inspiration.

Britain stands to one side of Europe; its physical presence around the world largely symbolic. For all its pragmatism and experience the British bourgeoisie may still find that splits will develop as it weighs its options. The British bourgeoisie cannot afford the military, diplomatic or financial tools to allow it to intervene around the world, yet can't escape the framework of modern capitalism that forces all states into imperialist rivalry and ultimately conflict, whatever their resources.   North 10/05/10

During the huge demonstrations in Athens against the Greek government's austerity measures on 5 May, the Marfin bank was set alight, apparently by molotovs thrown from the crowd. Three bank workers died of smoke inhalation. These events provoked a frenzied response from the government, eager to brand all demonstrators as ultra-violent hoodlums, and from the police, who have mounted a series of brutal raids in the ‘anarchist' dominated district of Exarcheia in Athens. The deaths have also had at least a temporary numbing effect on the development of the struggle, with many workers confused about how to go forward, and even considering the need to accept austerity measures in order to ‘save the economy' or avoid a slide into chaos (at least according to recent opinion polls which claim that over 50% of the population would be prepared to accept the draconian EU/IMF package or preferred wage cuts to national bankruptcy).

From the side of the ‘protestors', from those very considerable numbers of proletarians who are convinced that the economic attacks must be resisted actively, there have been various responses. Many statements have with real justification blamed the bullying tactics of the banks' owner, Vgenopoulos, who pressured employees to stay at work on pain of losing their jobs, even though the bank was known to be on the route of the demonstration and bank burnings have been a commonplace on such occasions: what's more, entrances to the bank were locked making it extremely difficult to exit the building[1]. Others (see, for example, the statement by the ‘Anarchist Crouch' on the Occupied London blog[2]) blamed paramilitary gangs for the attack.

This may or may not be the case; but such a response, left at that point, doesn't really help us understand why the bourgeoisie in Greece has made such extensive use of ‘false flag' agents to carry out provocations and ultra-violent acts: the truth is that such activities tend to thrive in the context of a culture of minority violence among a substantial part of the ‘anti-authoritarian' milieu in Greece. An addiction to violence as an end in itself can easily become a positive hindrance to the development of a wider class movement and its efforts to organise and extend the fight against the state's assault on working class living conditions. 

The following statements, however, show that within this milieu, the recent tragedy has pushed forward a process of serious self-examination and reflection. The first is another text by comrades contributing to the ‘Occupied London' blog, many of them of Greek origin. While in no way exonerating the bourgeoisie from responsibility for the deaths, or succumbing to pacifism, their statement does seek to go to the roots of the problem: "The time has come for us to talk frankly about violence and to critically examine a specific culture of violence that has been developing in Greece in the past few years. Our movement has not been strengthened because of the dynamic means it sometimes uses but rather, because of its political articulation. December 2008 did not turn historical only because thousands picked up and threw stones and molotovs, but mainly because of its political and social characteristics - and its rich legacies at this level"[3].

The second statement is from a longer text by TPTG ‘The Children of the Gallery', a libertarian communist group in Greece[4]. In the previous issue of this paper we published part of an article written by the same group (although under a different name)[5], a text which lucidly exposed the sabotaging role played by the trade unions and the Greek Communist Party in the current wave of strikes and demonstrations. As our French comrades have pointed out, certain passages in the complete edition of that article did not seem to take into account the danger that some violent actions carried out during the course of wider struggles can have a counter-productive result[6]. The passage published below, by contrast, shows the same critical approach as the Occupied London statement, for example where it writes: "As for the anarchist/anti-authoritarian milieu itself and its dominant insurrectional tendency, the tradition of a fetishised, macho glorification of violence has been too long and consistent to remain indifferent now. Violence as an end in itself in all its variations (including armed struggle proper) has been propagated constantly for years now and especially after the December rebellion a certain degree of nihilistic decomposition has become evident".

We can only encourage this process of reflection and hope that we can take part in the debates it engenders. Both the Occupied London statement and the various articles of the TPTG argue that the real strength of the movement in Greece, and indeed of any proletarian movement, is its capacity for self-organisation, extension, and "political articulation"; and we can add that this is also the real alternative not only to the substitutionist violence of a minority, but also to the stifling of the class movement by the ‘official' forces who claim its leadership - the unions, the CP, and the leftists.WR, 16/5/10.

Occupied London statement: What do we honestly have to say about Wednesday's events?

The text below summarises some initial thoughts on Wednesday's tragic events by some of us here at Occupied London. English and Greek versions follow - please disseminate.

What do we honestly have to say about Wednesday's events?

What do the events of Wednesday (5/5) honestly mean for the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement? How do we stand in the face of the deaths of these three people - regardless of who caused them? Where do we stand as humans and as people in struggle? Us, who do not accept that there are such things as "isolated incidents" (of police or state brutality) and who point the finger, on a daily basis, at the violence exercised by the state and the capitalist system. Us, who have the courage to call things by their name; us who expose those who torture migrants in police stations or those who play around with our lives from inside glamorous offices and TV studios. So, what do we have to say now?

We could hide behind the statement issued by the Union of Bank Workers (OTOE) or the accusations by employees of the bank branch; or we could keep it at the fact that the deceased had been forced to stay in a building with no fire protection - and locked up, even. We could keep it at what a scum-bag is Vgenopoulos, the owner of the bank; or at how this tragic incident will be used to leash out some unprecedented repression. Whoever (dared to) pass through Exarcheia on Wednesday night already has a clear picture of this. But this is not where the issue lies.

The issue is for us to see what share of the responsibilities falls on us, on all of us. We are all jointly responsible. Yes, we are right to fight with all our powers against the unjust measures imposed upon us; we are right to dedicate all our strength and our creativity toward a better world. But as political beings, we are equally responsible for every single one of our political choices, for the means we have impropriated and for our silence every time that we did not admit to our weaknesses and our mistakes. Us, who do not suck up to the people in order to gain in votes, us who have no interest in exploiting anyone, have the capacity, under these tragic circumstances, to be honest with ourselves and with those around us.

What the Greek anarchist movement is experiencing at the moment is some total numbness. Because there are pressurising conditions for some tough self-criticism that is going to hurt. Beyond the horror of the fact that people have died who were on "our side", the side of the workers - workers under extremely difficult conditions who would have quite possibly chosen to march by our side if things were different in their workplace - beyond this, we are hereby also confronted with demonstrator/s who put the lives of people in danger. Even if (and this goes without question) there was no intention to kill, this is a matter of essence that can hold much discussion - some discussion regarding the aims that we set and the means that we chose.

The incident did not happen at night, at some sabotage action. It happened during the largest demonstration in contemporary Greek history. And here is where a series of painful questions emerge: Overall, in a demonstration of 150-200,000, unprecedented in the last few years, is there really a need for some "upgraded" violence? When you see thousands shouting "burn, burn Parliament" and swear at the cops, does another burnt bank really have anything more to offer to the movement?

When the movement itself turns massive - say like in December 2008 - what can an action offer, if this action exceeds the limits of what a society can take (at least at a present moment), or if this action puts human lives at danger?

When we take to the streets we are one with the people around us; we are next to them, by their side, with them - this is, at the end of the day, why we work our arses off writing texts and posters - and our own clauses are a single parameter in the many that converge. The time has come for us to talk frankly about violence and to critically examine a specific culture of violence that has been developing in Greece in the past few years. Our movement has not been strengthened because of the dynamic means it sometimes uses but rather, because of its political articulation. December 2008 did not turn historical only because thousands picked up and threw stones and molotovs, but mainly because of its political and social characteristics - and its rich legacies at this level. Of course we respond to the violence exercised upon us, and yet we are called in turn to talk about our political choices as well as the means we have appropriated, recognising our - and their - limits.

When we speak of freedom, it means that at every single moment we doubt what yesterday we took for granted. That we dare to go all the way and, avoiding some cliché political wordings, to look at things straight into the eye, as they are. It is clear that since we do not consider violence to be an end to itself, we should not allow it to cast shadows to the political dimension of our actions. We are neither murderers nor saints. We are part of a social movement, with our weaknesses and our mistakes. Today, instead of feeling stronger after such an enormous demonstration we feel numb, to say the least. This in itself speaks volumes. We must turn this tragic experience into soul-searching and inspire one another since at the end of the day, we all act based on our consciousness. And the cultivation of such a collective consciousness is what is at stake.

Extract from TPTG article ‘In critical and suffocating times'

It is more than clear that the sickening game of turning the dominant fear/guilt for the debt into a fear/guilt for the resistance and the (violent) uprising against the terrorism of debt has already started. If class struggle escalates, the conditions may look more and more like the ones in a proper civil war. The question of violence has already become central. In the same way we assess the state's management of violence, we are obliged to assess proletarian violence, too: the movement has to deal with the legitimation of rebellious violence and its content in practical terms. As for the anarchist-antiauthoritarian milieu itself and its dominant insurrectional tendency the tradition of a fetishised, macho glorification of violence has been too long and consistent to remain indifferent now. Violence as an end in itself in all its variations (including armed struggle proper) has been propagated constantly for years now and especially after the December rebellion a certain degree of nihilistic decomposition has become evident (there were some references to it in our text ‘The Rebellious Passage'), extending over the milieu itself. In the periphery of this milieu, in its margins, a growing number of very young people has become visible promoting nihilistic limitless violence (dressed up as "December's nihilism") and "destruction" even if this also includes variable capital (in the form of scabs, "petit-bourgeois elements", "law-abiding citizens"). Such a degeneration coming out of the rebellion and its limits as well as out of the crisis itself is clearly evident. Certain condemnations of these behaviours and a self-critique to some extent have already started in the milieu (some anarchist groups have even called the perpetrators "para-statal thugs") and it is quite possible that organised anarchists and anti-authoritarians (groups or squats) will try to isolate both politically and operationally such tendencies. However, the situation is more complicated and it is surpassing the theoretical and practical (self)critical abilities of this milieu. In hindsight, such tragic incidents with all their consequences might have happened in the December rebellion itself: what prevented them was not only chance (a petrol station that did not explode next to buildings set on fire on Sunday the 7th of December, the fact that the most violent riots took place at night with most buildings empty), but also the creation of a (though limited) proletarian public sphere and of communities of struggle which found their way not only through violence but also through their own content, discourse and other means of communication. It was these pre-existing communities (of students, football hooligans, immigrants, anarchists) that turned into communities of struggle by the subjects of the rebellion themselves that gave to violence a meaningful place. Will there be such communities again now that not only a proletarian minority is involved? Will there be a practical way of self-organisation in the workplaces, in the neighborhoods or in the streets to determine the form and the content of the struggle and thus place violence in a liberating perspective?

Uneasy questions in pressing times but we will have to find the answers struggling.

TPTG  9th of May

[1]1 See in particular a statement by an employee of the Marfin bank, published on the Occupied London blog: https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/05/an-employee-of-marfin-ban... [84]

[2] https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/09/286-the-"anarchist-crouch... [85]

[3] https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/07/what-do-we-honestly-have-... [86]

[4] https://libcom.org/news/critical-suffocating-times-tptg-10052010 [87]

[5] https://libcom.org/news/tptg-"there's-only-one-thing-left-settle-our-acc... [88]

[6] https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/prise_de_position_d_un_gr... [89]

At the time of writing the streets of Bankok in Thailand give all the appearance of a civil war. Thousands of protestors, organised in the ‘Red Shirt' movement, have set up a barricaded camp and are now being besieged by the army, who have declared parts of the city to be ‘live fire zones', with the aim of intimidating the protestors and preventing the arrival of any reinforcements. The government's troops killed at least 16 people on 14 May alone. They have claimed to be acting in self-defence and following strict rules of engagement, but the Red Shirts are armed mainly with sticks and stones. What's more the troops have clearly been using snipers against specific targets: a dissident general who had joined the Red Shirts and was advising them on security was shot in the head from  long distance and is unlikely to survive.

There is little doubt that the bulk of the Red Shirts are made up of Thailand's poor and dispossessed. Many of those in the camp are from the peasant areas of the north and northwest of the country, but they also seem to be gaining support from the urban poor.  According to an article in Time magazine cited on the World Socialist Website (‘Ten dead as Thai military lays siege to protesters', 15/5/10), during the clashes "the soldiers also came under attack from behind after hundreds of slum dwellers from the port neighbourhood of Klong Toey spilled onto the streets to fire rockets and sling shots at the troops... When the Klong Toey mob kept advancing, the soldiers opened fire with rubber bullets. Hundreds of people turned, ducked and ran in a panic, streaming into side streets. At least three people were injured."

There is no doubt about the courage of the protestors, nor about the fact that what has driven them into the streets is the impoverishment heaped on them not only by the current world crisis, but also by the impact of the downfall of the far eastern ‘Tigers' and ‘Dragons' in 1997 and of decades of ‘underdevelopment' before that. But the Red Shirt movement is not a movement of the exploited and the oppressed fighting for their own independent interests. Rather it is an example of deep popular discontent being chanelled in a false direction - the struggle to replace the current clique of militarists and millionaires running Thailand with another bourgeois faction. The principal demand of the Red Shirts is for new, fairer elections and the reinstatment of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who gained a good deal of popularity among the rural poor after he came into office in 2001 by offering farmers easy credit and subsidies and keeping crop prices high; there were also ‘reforms' aimed at the urban masses in the shape of access to healthcare. These changes created a backlash from some of the more well-established parts of the ruling class and parts of the middle class (who sometimes parade around as the ‘Yellow Shirt Movement') and in particular the military, who ousted Thaksin in 2006. But the main objection to Thaksin was less his ‘support' for the peasants or prolearians than the fact that he was beginning to run Thailand as his own personal corporation. Thaksin was a ‘new money' media billionaire and his style of government was cutting across traditional lines of influence and privilege that unite the state bureacuracy and the army.

There have been statements coming from elements within the Red Shirt movement about ‘getting rid of the elite', attempts to appeal to the soldiers to join them, interviews with supporters for whom the return of Thaksin is not really a priority. These are indications that a movement raising real class demands could emerge in Thailand in the future. But the Red Shirt campaign - whose official title is the ‘National United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship'  -  is an obstacle to the development of such a movement because it is geared towards the installation of a ‘proper' bourgeois democracy in Thailand, and such a goal has long ceased to have any use to the working class. As we wrote in the conclusion to a recent online article, ‘Kyrgyzstan and Thailand: Are revolutions going on [90] ?':

 "The ‘Red Shirt' movement is basically one of the urban and rural poor, mobilised behind the new bourgeoisie, who are opposed to the ‘old' military and monarchist factions. It is not a movement of, or controlled by, the working class. The only workers' action during this period, a strike of 8,000 workers at the Camera maker Nikon, emerged completely independently of the ‘Red Shirt' movement.

And here lies the central point of our argument. These so-called ‘revolutions', like the ‘Green movement' in Iran recently, are not movements of the working class. Yes, there are many workers involved in them, and probably in the case of Kyrgyzstan a majority of the participants were workers, but they take part in these actions as individuals not as workers. The movement of the working class is one that can only be based upon class struggle of workers for their own interests, not cross-class alliances and populist movements. It is only within a massive movement of strikes that the working class can develop its own organs, mass meetings, strike committees and ultimately workers' councils, that can assert working class control over the movement, and develop a struggle for working class interests. Outside of this perspective is only the possibility of workers being used as cannon-fodder for different political factions. In Greece, perhaps, we can see the very start of the long slow development towards this process. In Kyrgyzstan, and Thailand, we only see workers getting shot down in the streets on behalf of those who want to be the new bosses".  Amos 15/5/10

According to the right-wing press the cause of unemployment is that those seeking jobs are refusing to take the jobs offered to them. The new Lib-Con government is going to crack down on this type of behaviour. This is an example of what we might call the bourgeoisie's attempts to develop an economic narrative, which is often - but not always - interwoven with some threads of economic reality. However, once it is necessary to blame the unemployed for their own condition, then there are no elements of economic reality left.

This takes us back to the 1930s, when the bourgeoisie's economists, for lack of anything else to say, explained that all unemployment was voluntary. Not all the bourgeoisie thought that - Roosevelt and Hitler, for example, thought that creating new jobs might alleviate the problem. Furthermore Keynes, the bourgeoisie's last significant economist, thought so too, thus giving rise to the intellectual framework for the economic policy of the USA and the western European states after the Second World War.

The policies adopted within this framework were called Keynesian policies, in honour of the great man, or else policies of ‘full employment', or policies of ‘demand management'. All these terms meant the same thing, since Keynes had proposed that the disastrous fall off in economic activity during the Great Depression of the 30s, was due to a lack of demand, and that if the state made up the deficiency in demand then the slack in economic activity would disappear and full employment would result.

We do not have to consider here in detail whether these claims were true since we are only concerned with the development of the bourgeoisie's economic narrative which, by definition, cannot be the whole truth, since it is only what they want the world to believe. What we want to underline here, is that once the bourgeoisie are thrown back to the ‘explanation' of unemployment that it is voluntary, it is strong evidence of the depth of the crisis and, also, that they are running out of real ideas for dealing with unemployment.

Changing explanations for the crisis

On one point Keynes was undoubtedly right and that is that long term mass unemployment is a critically important expression of the economic crisis. And, for a lengthy period after the Second World War, the bourgeoisie in the Western metropolitan countries seemed justified in their belief that they did indeed have the secret to containing the economic crisis. This was evidenced by high employment levels and a relative prosperity for major sections of the population.

From the point of the view of the bourgeoisie it was unfortunate that the Keynesian policies proved to have no effectiveness over the longer term. In fact state intervention, whatever form it takes, is only a palliative for the crisis. If the underlying crisis of capitalism were not there, then there would hardly be a requirement for the state to intervene. In the ascendant period of capitalism in the nineteenth century, this type of permanent intervention of the state merely to keep the economy going was unknown. The bourgeoisie cannot admit this, of course, which is why it has to invent a ‘new' explanation each time the crisis enters a deeper phase, even if it is a question of recycling elements from an earlier period, which it often is.

In the mid 1970s the bourgeoisie had reached a point where every attempt to continue to stimulate the economy was resulting in runaway inflation - and furthermore was failing to stimulate the economy in any case. They called this phenomenon ‘stagflation'. Since it was impossible to continue like this, they settled on a compromise solution rather awkwardly called the NAIRU - the non-accelerating inflation, rate of unemployment. In other words they realised that they had to accept a certain rate of long term mass unemployment in order to keep inflation under control and therefore to give up the goal of full employment. The fact that they resisted this as long as possible is testimony to the fact that they recognised that unemployment was a key indicator of the economic crisis. Also it was difficult for them to acknowledge that everything that they had been saying since the Second World War on their mastery of the economic situation was proving to be completely empty.

In real terms we have been on the same economic trajectory ever since. Each downturn in the economy leaves its mark in terms of many more people being jettisoned from economic activity altogether. Meanwhile the upturns do indeed do something to alleviate the problem at the margin but always leave a clear stamp of the underlying problem clearly visible.

During the Thatcher years many unemployed people were persuaded to go onto incapacity benefit, for instance, and there are now 2.64 million people on this register, whereas in the 1970s there were 700,000. The bourgeoisie were just about to ‘do something' about this (according to their own declarations) when the recent recession struck, pushing up the number of ‘officially' unemployed up to 2.5 million. So, if they are serious about that still, it requires finding jobs for almost 5 million people altogether. Even that does not cover all the people who might be viewed as unemployed or partially unemployed but we do not have to be exhaustive here.

According to the bourgeoisie's version of reality - its changing account of the economic situation - while we do pass through ‘difficult and painful periods of adjustment' (as now for instance) we otherwise progress from one golden economic era to the next. Although memories of the ten years before the recent financial crisis and recession must necessarily be fading somewhat now, if you think back it was only a few years ago that Brown's long period of steering the British economy was acknowledged by all commentators as a period of outstanding economic ‘success'. The pound was strong, the City of London raked in huge profits and other parts of the economy forged ahead (house prices for instance). Even those commentators who were critics of Brown's stewardship of the economy accepted the idea of unending and apparently limitless economic expansion with its accompanying rewards (albeit for a much more restricted part of the population than in the 50s and 60s).

A new government faces the crisis

Cameron has a decidedly more difficult task in front of him to develop a theme of economic progress. His task is to implement the necessary cuts in state spending to bring the deficit under control (whichever party won the election would have had to do this, of course). Thatcher had to deal with a similar problem in an earlier epoch - she needed to show that somehow the adjustments needed after the collapse of the post-war economic boom portended a bright new future for the British economy. And some real and necessary policy adjustments were made at that time. For example it was necessary from the bourgeoisie's point of view to stop the fruitless and expensive support for sectors of manufacturing - like British Leyland and the steel industry - that had no prospect of ever paying off.

In Thatcher's presentation the resulting ‘withdrawal of the state' from the role of economic ownership and management was what would create the necessary market efficiencies to allow the British economy to flourish. Since some of the state support was simply building in inefficiencies there was a real rationale for what she claimed, in a limited sense. However, elevated to a general concept, we can see from the history of capitalism that we have briefly gone over here, that the idea that the capitalist market holds within itself the key to boundless economic expansion and that the ‘interference' of the state in economic matters is what holds back the natural trajectory of growth does not stand up to examination. More important than this is the fact that the state never actually gave up its role, under Thatcher or anyone else, in keeping the economy going. As indicated above, state intervention was simply reined in within a more manageable objective than the maintenance of full employment.

Much of the state's role in the economy is now disguised behind a limited shielding of ‘private' economic activity: "Lots of businesses in the north-east, south and west Yorkshire are entirely government-funded businesses. It's almost a form of nationalisation." (a spokesman of Grant Thornton quoted in the Financial Times, 10/5/10).

Cameron has indicated that he is well aware that whole geographic sectors of the British economy are actually economic dependencies of the state. When he speaks of cut backs in the public sector this ranges far wider than simply the areas that are directly and obviously under the control of the state. He is unquestionably right in thinking that whole areas of the economy are simply kept functioning to prevent the unemployment totals rising even further (effectively this is disguised unemployment). Therefore figures that total those currently unemployed are merely the first indications of the real underlying rate of unemployment.

If Cameron is serious about making a level of cuts that would bring more of this potential unemployment out into the open, it is important to understand that there cannot at this time be a repeat of the efforts made in the 30s to deal with it. That was the period of the first moves. This is definitely the end game that we have entered. The crisis is very much more developed now than in the 30s. It will be very difficult for the bourgeoisie to develop a new, really convincing explanation of how the economy will revive from now on. For the working class this is positive in the sense that the economic crisis is one of the most important factors driving the development of class consciousness.   Hardin 13/5/10

The last of the series of five-day strikes by BA cabin crew came to an end on 9th June. There are reports of further ballots and strikes through the summer. BA workers are not alone. In February Lufthansa pilots went on strike and in early June Air India workers staged a wildcat strike. As in Britain, the companies involved used the courts to try and stop the strikes and in India it seems that a number of workers have been sacked or suspended for their part in the action.

In all of these strikes workers are fighting to defend their pay and conditions against companies that are turning the screws because they are struggling to make profits. The head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has declared that "Labour needs to stop picketing and cooperate".

The crisis of profitability in the airline industry

The airline industry is a volatile and highly competitive industry with wide fluctuations between periods of prosperity and crisis. According to IATA, the industry as a whole has not covered its capital costs over the last two decades and has only generated profits in three of the last ten years, in two of which the profit margin was less than 1% of turnover.

Historically, many states had nationalised carriers and competition was strictly controlled. These arrangements began to end as the post war boom unravelled in the 1970s amidst rising inflation and falling profits. The bourgeoisie's response of allowing the laws of the market a freer play led to the liberalisation of the rules covering flights, the privatisation of various carriers and the emergence of ‘budget' airlines to rival the older companies.

Although there has been a rapid contraction, there are still over 1,000 airlines - a stark contrast to industries such as car manufacture and pharmaceuticals. This has resulted in frequent overcapacity, which has threatened profits and fuelled intense competition. The fluctuations in the price of oil have also had a serious impact.

The industry has responded to this by cutting costs. This is epitomised by the ‘budget' airlines which have increased the hours that planes spend flying and reduced costs by eliminating or charging for ‘extras' and locating their operations away from the main airports. In the US their share of the market increased from under 7% of domestic passengers in 1991 to 25% in 2005.  They also employed fewer workers with worse pay and conditions. The older airlines inevitably followed suit. In the US the workforce was cut by 30%, or 100,000 jobs in five years, and pay was reduced by 7%.

The events of 9/11 exacerbated this by massively reducing the numbers flying and it was not until 2004 that they returned to the pre-9/11 level. The open crisis that began in 2007 saw a collapse in income and profits with a global loss of $16bn in 2008 and an estimated loss of $9.9bn in 2009. The latest forecast is that global profits will recover to $2.5bn this year, but that in Europe there will be a loss of $2.8bn. The result has been further consolidation in the industry, such as the merger of United Airlines and Continental Airlines announced in early May, creating the world's largest operator.

British Airways has not escaped any of this, going through repeated mergers from its origins in the 1920s to the current deal with Iberia Airlines. In the 1970s the merger of BEA and BOAC to form BA created the largest network of routes in the world. In the early 1980s over 23,000 workers were made redundant as BA sought to maintain its position as one of the most profitable airlines in the world. It was privatised in 1987 and went through further acquisitions. By the mid-1990s the company was in financial difficulties and attacks on the workers resulted in a number of strikes. Costs and capacity were reduced in order to remain profitable. A decade later Willie Walsh oversaw further restructuring and cost cutting, leading to the present disputes.

Class struggle in the air

The crisis of profitability in the airlines explains the viciousness of the attacks on the workers and the bullying that has characterised BA's tactics during the strike. Workers have been disciplined for holding private conversations, participating in discussions on union member-only forums and even for making jokes. Pressure was put on one union representative to disclose the identities of colleagues posting under pseudonyms on the union's internal messageboard.[1] The withdrawal of travel ‘perks' actually means some staff will be unable to afford to continue working because they have to travel to and from where they are working.

The appearance of tough bosses, such as Walsh, are not the cause of the current confrontation but the consequence of the necessity for this industry to increase the exploitation of workers, to cut numbers, to worsen conditions in order to survive. For the industry to prosper the workers must suffer. There is no common ground between the two.

In this situation, the unions as ever claim to represent the interests of labour against capital. In reality, their role condemns them to making repeated concessions to the bosses while acting as a safety valve for workers' anger.

In the BA dispute, Unite has led the workers through the courts and forced them to jump through all the legal hoops the bourgeoisie can devise. At the same time they have agreed most of the cuts the company wants, in particular by agreeing that new staff will receive worse pay and conditions. While the determination of the workers to resist the loss of travel ‘perks' is understandable, this increasingly looks like a rearguard action.

One of the features of the strike has been the repeated divisions created between the workers. Even before the strike the pilots' union made it clear they would not be involved while a new ‘professional' organisation was set up with a nod and a wink from the bosses. During the strike, divisions between BASSA (representing flight attendants) and Unite have been built up, the one being presented as a throw-back to the militancy of 1970s, the other as more realistic. Most recently it seems that further divisions are emerging between those who have had to return to work and those who have remained on strike, with the result that morale is collapsing.

This threatens the viability of the strike since it risks undermining the foundations of the working class' strength: its unity and solidarity. In the present situation, where the attacks on the working class, whether from the state or from private industry, are taking place in all sectors of the economy and carry such a high risk of provoking the working class to struggle, it is hard to see such tactics as accidental. They are the old strategy of divide and rule, with the bosses and the unions equally responsible.

This does not mean the working class has no options. There is common ground not only within BA, but also across all airlines and beyond, to the many other sectors facing austerity today.  Nor does the working class have to be cowed by the law. In 2005 baggage handlers at Heathrow walked out in solidarity with the Gate Gourmet workers who were under attack from management. No ballots, no false separation between different jobs or employers. Last year the construction workers at oil refineries and in other industries reminded us of the ability of workers to organise their own struggles outside of the suffocating embrace of the unions and in solidarity with other workers. This is the example we have to follow. 

North 12/06/10

[1] See ‘High court ruling scuppers BA strikes' [92]on libcom.org

Injunctions have been used to prevent or delay strike action by BA cabin crew - twice, and against rail signal workers in April, making use of strict criteria for balloting union members and informing them and the employers about the result. This tactic is being used more and more with 15 injunctions applied for and 14 granted from 2005-8, but 11 applied for and 10 granted last year, and 7 applied for in the first 5 months of this year.

The issue is being well publicised in the media. When the latest BA injunction was granted we heard more about the unions' ‘special privilege' to be able to cause economic mayhem; when it was overturned, more about the risk to the right to strike. The RMT is appealing to the European Court to overturn the legislation allowing injunctions on a technicality.

The so-called right to strike

When we listen to commentators discussing whether these injunctions take away the right to strike or simply make it much harder to exercise that right, we should not forget just how limited an aspect of strike action they are talking about. This right to strike excludes wildcat strikes decided at mass meetings, like the Lindsey strikes last year; it excludes the solidarity strike of baggage handlers at Heathrow in 2005 who supported the workers at Gate Gourmet; it excludes action by those who refused to cross picket lines during the postal workers' strikes, when their section had not been called out by the unions; and it excludes secondary picketing - all illegal. Solidarity and extension of struggle are the basis of effective strike action, and no-one on the media is talking about that at all.

Today workers in all industries and all across the world are facing the same kind of austerity attacks, the same risk to jobs and the same rising unemployment as all bosses respond to the new stage in the economic crisis. Not only that, but many of the attacks are being determined and coordinated by the state, yet farmed out to different businesses and contractors to carry them out - whether it is Network Rail, this or that train operator, academy school or Local Education Authority, Primary Care or Hospital Trust or commercial operator. We simply cannot respond to austerity on this scale with a struggle divided by trade, by membership of this or that union or according to which employer exploits us.

In other words, injunctions or no injunctions, effective strike action has been outside the law all along.

These are not just down to ‘Thatcher's anti-union laws'. However much her government contributed to the legislation it was only continuing work started by the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s and continued by the Blair government which laid the basis for employers to seek injunctions on technicalities. In other words it comes from the whole ruling class.

‘Anti-union' laws help unions control workers

Why the rash of injunctions now? In part, of course, because they are aware of the growing discontent and anger among workers and they want to make it as hard as possible for it to erupt into strike action. But it is perfectly clear that injunctions are not always used against strikes, and particularly not when workers are in a struggle that expresses solidarity beyond the bounds of legal trade union struggle. If the unions claiming to act on behalf of the workers can't keep them within the narrow limits of a legal strike, waiting for a ballot, warning the employer, not contacting other workers, then it's hardly likely that a High Court judgement will prevent a strike. So injunctions are a tactic bosses can use when workers are hesitant, unsure of how to take a struggle forward - as they are today in most cases, faced with the enormity of the economic crisis and the threat of austerity and sharply rising unemployment.

For example the BA cabin crew are not only facing job losses now, but will face further attacks during the planned merger with Iberia Airlines. They have followed Unite through the whole long drawn out balloting and negotiating process. But despite the fact that they are following all the union tactics, they still won't accept the deal arranged by the union. Simon Jenkins (on ‘Any Questions' 21/5/10) told us that Walsh was getting on very well with the Unite leaders, "the trouble lay with the staff on the ground ... unions don't organise themselves well enough so they can deliver". Similarly, Duncan Holley, BASSA branch secretary, told The Times that they would be unable to sell the deal to the members who don't trust BA. The injunctions, like the ballots and negotiations, lead workers into the morale-sapping delays and on-off strikes, separated from other airline workers who are currently being organised into an alternative cabin crew to break the strike.

Workers have nothing to gain from supporting a campaign to defend the unions or the ‘right to strike', nor from the RMT's visit to the European Court. Workers and unions are on different sides of the class war. The unions need to sell the bosses' austerity in ways that their members can be induced to tolerate, and when it's intolerable keep the response within the legal limits. This is exactly what they have been doing in the BA strike.

When workers burst these narrow limits to struggle and seek or show solidarity, uniting across all the divisions imposed by capitalism and unions, then no injunction will stop them. 

Alex  10/6/10

The announcement of £6.24 billion worth of public spending cuts from the Coalition Government on 24th May is, according to them, "only the first step". In reality, this new round of cuts is in perfect continuity with plans already drawn up by the Labour government which had pledged £11 billion "efficiency savings" in the pre-Budget report.

Last year, the NHS also was told it would have to deliver between £15 and £20 billion in "efficiency savings". This is what the "protection" of NHS budgets, vaunted by David Cameron seems to amount to: no additional cuts, for now at least.

In education, the dire financial status of the Further Education sector has been revealed in a new report that at least 50 FE colleges face closure in the next three years. The Labour government had already cut £200 million from adult education and the Higher Education sector has endured cuts of £573 million. The cuts announced by the new government include £670 million off the Education Department's budget and £836 million from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (which is a key channel of University funding).

Local government will suffer almost as badly with cuts of more than £2 billion: "a £1.2bn reduction in local authority grants, £270m cuts in regional development agency spending, £268m by "cutting waste and inefficiencies" in the communities department and £230m from private finance initiatives and other savings. Of the £1.2bn cuts to councils' grants, £362m will come from the communities department, £311m from education, £309m from transport, £8m from environment, food and rural affairs, and £175m from other Whitehall grants"[1].  This will have a drastic impact on local services and almost certainly see an increase in efforts by councils to raise local revenue through council tax and other avenues.

The impact of all this on unemployment will be dramatic. "The government's planned spending squeeze will throw 750,000 public sector workers on to the dole queue and push unemployment close to 3 million for the first time since the early 1990s, a respected thinktank warns today.

In a stark assessment of the human impact of the cuts the coalition says are required to tackle the ballooning deficit, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, says unemployment will rise to a peak of 2.95 million in the second half of 2012 and remain near that level until 2015, the entire period of the coalition government"[2].

Welfare Cuts

The welfare budget alone costs the British state nearly £87.7 billion a year. Most of this is used to support people who produce absolutely nothing for capitalism: the unemployed, the sick and disabled (which often include workers forced onto this benefit to hide the unemployment figures). Statutory sick pay (money paid directly to sick workers or claimed back from the state by companies with their own sick pay scheme) alone costs £65 million.

Iain Duncan-Smith has already started talking tough on welfare. The 2.65 million people on incapacity benefit are going to face reassessments - this was already being carried out by the previous government but the new administration is attempting to speed up the pace from 10,000 to 30,000 per week.

The size of the problem is enormous, of course, with over 5 million "parked" on out-of-work benefits; and Duncan-Smith is perfectly correct to point out that there is little income difference between a minimum wage job and a life on benefits. The irony, of course, is that far from choosing the easy life of benefits, hundreds of thousands simply have no choice because jobs don't exist in their area.

There is much talk about cutting "welfare for the wealthy", so-called middle-class families that apparently cream off a large proportion of things like child tax credits. This all sounds good in theory until you realise the people being targeted are families earning around £30,000 a year, i.e. almost any family with more than one earner.

As for pensions, in continuation with previous government policy, the pension age will be raised, but again the rise will be accelerated. In addition, there is now serious talk of the pension age being raised to 70.

The Campaigns on Public Sector Pay

It is clear that an assault on public sector pay will be a significant component of the attacks. There have been ideological campaigns against "gold-plated" public sector pension for years - as pension benefits in the private sector have been rapidly eroded, the media has presented public sector workers as an isolated and intransigently greedy group for managing to hang onto theirs.  All public-sector workers earning more than £18,000 per annum are already targeted for a pay freeze next year and some commentators suspect that pay-curbs will be imposed for a far longer period in the forthcoming Emergency Budget.

Since the election, the ruling class has launched a very clever campaign by exposing the extremely high salaries that people such as University vice-chancellors, the heads of the various quangos, etc. have been receiving. Of course, these state functionaries have nothing to do with the vast majority of public sector workers many of whom are the lowest paid workers in the country - rather they are part of the ruling class itself. But the aim of the campaign is to reinforce the general idea of the public sector being too expensive and somehow privileged when compared to the long-suffering private sector. By generating a sense of moral outrage at the public sector "fat cats", the ruling class is creating an ideological atmosphere which will enable attacks on all state workers (the largest single group of workers in the country).

Worse to Come

It is clear that the coalition government intends to carry on the general policy of cuts begun by their Labour predecessors. It is evident then that although the language has changed - ministers now talk openly about "cuts" - the reality of austerity has not. And, with the budget deficit currently standing at a staggering £156 billion, it is clear that more and more savage cuts are on the horizon.

The ruling class has tried its best to present the coming misery as inevitable. The economic crisis is presented as some kind of natural disaster, although the previous government is of course blamed for adopting the wrong policies to deal with it. Thus the unprecedented assault on living standards is portrayed as the "cleanup operation" necessary to get us back to normality. From the point of view of capitalism, this is essentially true. Capitalists have no real control over the wider economy which imposes its blind laws upon them as much as anyone else. Nonetheless, they are determined to defend the system which grants them their power and privilege.

The coming austerity is the result of that defence. Capitalism has no other purpose that to make profit and all capitalist crises are essentially crises of profitability. Essentially, this means that its exploitation of the working class is no longer sufficient to satisfy its profit requirements. In order to remedy this, capital tries to seize an increasing proportion of the total value created in production from the working class - concretely, this means a reduction in wages while those who cannot be successfully exploited are laid off.

Wages don't just include a worker's take-home pay - they also include all sorts of other benefits: pensions, healthcare, etc. In some countries these are provided directly by the employer, while in others, such as Britain, they are provided collectively by the state. Regardless of the method of this provision, all these "benefits" represent value that goes to the worker and not the capitalist.

Workers have a choice; we can submit to capitalism's efforts to save itself at our expense and condemn ourselves and our children to plummet into unprecedented levels of poverty and barbarity. Or, we can resist the sacrifices demanded by our capitalist masters until we reach a point where will be able to replace the drive for profit with a society focussed on the satisfaction of human need.   

Ishamael 8/6/10

[1]  www.theguardian.com/society/2010/may/24/cuts-local-government-loses-2bn [94]

[2]  www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jun/10/spending-cuts-public-sector-staff-thinktank [95]

The Chinese economy is supposed to be the exception to the global crisis of capitalism. Tell that to the thousands of Chinese workers who have been involved in a wave of strikes in recent weeks in many parts of the country.

Among the most publicised struggles has been at a number of Honda plants which so far have been hit by three waves of strikes, even after getting a 24% wage increase in the first strikes. At Foxconn, the maker of IPods where there have been many suicides recently, strike action won a 70% pay rise. At the KOK machinery factory there have been clashes between security forces and workers when the former tried to stop the latter taking their strike onto the streets.

These strikes have not been blacked out by the Chinese media because the companies are all foreign-owned and the labour disputes have been used for propaganda against China's Japanese and South Korean regional rivals. In reality, the strike movement has also involved workers in many Chinese enterprises and in a variety of cities. The use of the police and other security forces has been commonplace.

Spreading strikes

The media outside China has been quick to identify that something significant is underway. With headlines like "The rise of a Chinese workers' movement" (businessweeek.com), "New generation shakes China labour landscape" (Reuters) and "Strikes put China on spot over labour unrest" (Associated Press), the bourgeoisie recognises, in its crude way, that while there has been evidence in the past of the growing discontent in the working class in China, the present movement means something more.

The AP article (11/6/10) says "the authorities have long tolerated limited, local protests by workers unhappy over wages or other issues, perhaps recognising the need for an outlet for such frustrations" but the Financial Times (11/6/10) adds that "Signs are emerging that the labour protests in China are far more widespread and co-ordinated than previously thought, prompting fears of copycat industrial action that could raise costs for multinational companies." A Hong Kong-based economist quoted in the Daily Telegraph (10/6/10) echoes this "All it takes now is a single spark and news will spread all over China, which could lead to similar industrial action in other factories."

Labour and capital

The reasons for the struggles and their tendency to inspire and spread to others is something the ‘experts' try to explain away. "Workers keep themselves up to date on strike action via mobile phones and QQ, an instant messaging tool. They compare wages and working conditions, often with workers from their home province and use the results to bargain with employers, said Joseph Cheng, a professor at the City University of Hong Kong. ‘[Labour protests] have been happening across the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta since the beginning of the year' due to labour shortages." (FT 11/6/10) As another ‘expert' summarises: "'One of the strikes happened when workers got together just by sending text messages to each other,' said Dong Baohua, law professor at East China University of Politics and Law. ‘Modern technology makes strikes more likely to happen'" (ibid).

It's true that technological innovations are used by workers, but that doesn't explain why workers strike, why they want to come to come together in struggle. The reasons for that lie in the material conditions in which workers live and work. According to official statistics wages were 56% of Chinese GDP in 1983, but were down to 36% in 2005. In the last five years nearly 1 in 4 workers in China have had no wage increase. Whoever has been gaining from the Chinese economic miracle it's not been the working class. Recent increases in the minimum wage in important industrialised provinces like Guangdong, Shandong, Ningxia and Hubei have been explained as attempts to offset the effects of inflation, but even in the state-run media there are admissions that the prevention of social unrest is also a motive.

In the official People's Daily Online (9/6/10) in an article headlined "More worker unrest coming, experts predict" you can read that "The growing labour unrest originating in South China may make wage hikes a trend in the near future." They try to portray this as an ‘opportunity' and give no explanation for the ‘unrest'. However, like capitalists everywhere, they can do the maths, as one official explained the investment plans of Hong Kong businesses: "If labour costs increase, their profit will fall and they may even shift their factories to other countries that can provide cheaper labour."

Organising - in or out of the unions?

In China there has for a long time been a growing frustration and impatience with the unions. These explicitly state bodies not only discourage and try to prevent strikes, at Honda they used physical violence against workers, who, in turn fought back against union officials. It is no surprise that workers have tried other avenues. An article in the New York Times (10/6/10), for example, while reporting that "scattered strikes have begun to ripple into Chinese provinces previously untouched by the labour unrest", also showed what happened at Honda during one of the strikes. "The strikers here have developed a sophisticated, democratic organisation, in effect electing shop stewards to represent them in collective bargaining with management. They are also demanding the right to form a trade union separate from the government-controlled national federation of trade unions, which has long focused on maintaining labour peace for foreign investors."

While it is possible to see what impulses are at work here it is also necessary to recall the experience of workers in Poland in 1980-81. Here there was a country-wide strike movement in which workers' assemblies created their own committees and other forms of organisation. The whole force of this movement was weakened by the idea of creating ‘free trade unions' as opposed to the state-run monoliths. This idea took material form in the emergence of Solidarnosc, a union that went from undermining the movement at the start of the 80s to leading an austerity government with Lech Walesa as President in the early 1990s.

The attempts by workers to take struggles into their own hands can take many forms, whether with shop stewards, elected committees, delegations to other workers, or mass meetings where workers make their own decisions on the organisation of the struggle. There is no inevitable progression and many potential false turnings. What's important is to see the dynamic of the movement.

During the first Honda strike there was a statement from a delegation that clearly had illusions in the possibilities of unions, but also had other quite healthy ideas. For example: "We are not simply struggling for the rights of 1,800 workers, but for the rights of workers across the whole country". These workers may speak of ‘rights' rather than liberation, but they clearly show a concern for a movement far wider than one factory.

There is also a passage which, although part of a document that asserts "It is the duty of the trade union to defend workers' collective interests and provide leadership in workers' strikes" shows that there are other ideas developing as well. "All of us fellow workers in Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd. should stay united and not divided by the management. We understand that there are, inevitably, different opinions amongst us. We appeal to all fellow workers to express their views to the worker representatives. Although these representatives do not cover workers in all the departments, they take the opinions of all workers in the factory seriously and equally. Production line workers who are motivated and would like to participate in the negotiation with the management can join the delegation through election. ... Without the endorsement given by the workers' assembly, the representatives will not unilaterally agree to any proposal of standard lower than the demands stated in the above." This is from the translation that appears on libcom.org [98]. It is interesting to note that the passage on the need for workers' unity is translated on businessweek.com as "We call all workers to maintain a high degree of unity and not to allow the capitalists to divide us".

Whichever is the most accurate, the need for workers' unity, whether against ‘management' or ‘capitalists', is fundamental for working class struggle. In China the material situation that spurs on struggles and the question of how to organise is the same that faces workers across the world.  

Car 11/6/10

Two lakh fifty thousand jute workers around Kolkatta were on strike from early Dec 2009 for better wages, permanent status of huge number of contract workers, retirement benefits and other issues related to their living and working conditions. Above all these, they went on strike to get their back wages, force bosses to deposit health insurance, provident found and other deductions that have been made from their salaries   with state authorities. On 12th Feb 2010, after two months of strike, the entire cabal of unions ordered workers to go back to work without being able to get any concessions from the bosses. More, this setback set the stage for further assaults on the working class.

Jute Workers Strike Every Year

This latest strike was not the first recent struggle by jute workers. Jute workers have gone on strike nearly every year. There have been major strikes in 2002, 2004, a 63 days strike in 2007 and 18 days strike in 2008. Most of the times workers' effort to resist attacks or get some concessions have been thwarted by the bosses and the unions.

Roots of these desperate efforts of jute workers to fight back again and again lie in their harsh working conditions and efforts of the Stalinist and other unions and parties to keep workers down by violence and repression. Some of this also lies in the perennially troubled nature of many of the jute mills.

Jute workers are extremely low paid. Even permanent workers get only around Rs. 7000.00 [USD 150.00] per month. In every mill, more than a third of the workers are temporary or contractual who get less than half of the permanent workers at around Rs. 100.00 [2.2$] per day. Further these contract workers get paid only for days worked. Most of these temporary workers have spent all their lives working in the same mills without getting permanent as this does not suit the bosses. Often workers, both permanent and temporary, are not paid their full wages and benefits every month. When back wages and benefits accumulate these are sometime not paid for years. Even legal deductions from workers' wages that bosses make for health insurance [ESI] and provident fund are sometime not deposited with relevant authorities. Even when collective agreements have been reached these are not honored by the bosses. Employers simply resort to lockouts and non-payment of wages to force more onerous productivity targets on workers. Bosses have been able to act with impunity because of collusion with Left Front government and Stalinist and others unions. Government, which is party to most of the agreements, refuse to enforce its own labour regulations.

This has bred deep anger for the unions among jute workers that repeatedly find expression during these struggles. One of the more radical expressions of this anger was struggle of jute workers at Victoria Jute Mills and Kanoria Mills in Kolkatta in early nineteen nineties. At the time striking workers attacked and smashed trade union offices linked with the leftist and rightist unions and assaulted trade union leaders. Workers at Kanoria boycotted all existing trade unions and occupied the mill for several days.

But West Bengal has long been a leftist jungle that has not only been ruled for 30 years by Stalinist hyenas but has numerous oppositional leftist parties, groups, NGOs and ‘intellectuals'. Efforts of workers at Victoria and Kanoria Mills to challenge established unions were quickly defeated by these oppositional leftists and sundry other people who demobilized workers with false slogans. This has been permanent tragedy for jute workers in West Bengal and underlines the need for the development of a proletarian current amidst struggles of workers.

The Present Strike

Some 20 union federations were forced to call the present strike from 14th Dec 2009 under mounting pressure of jute workers after the failure of five rounds of tripartite negotiations involving officials from West Bengal's Left Front state government, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Workers on strike were not only demanding better wages but above all back wages and depositing of ESI and PF deducted from their wages over long periods of time. It is reported that on the average a worker is owed back wages up to Rs. 37000.00 which is equivalent to six months wages. Withholding all this is pure theft. Also, due to nondeposit of ESI and PF workers are often denied health care and retirement benefits.

As the strike continued, state and central government came under pressure from employers to intervene. According to Business Standard business groups were concerned that the strike could trigger militancy among other sections of workers who have been hit as a result of India's deteriorating economy. Further, bosses were loosing money. As per Business Standard, February 16 2010, 61-day strike had cost a total of 22 billion rupees [US$ 475 million].

The government in New Delhi, the state government led by CPI-M, other political parties and unions collaborated in undermining the strike.

Role of Political Parties

All political parties played at supporting the striking workers while at the same time advising unions controlled by them to bring the workers around to a ‘reasonable' point of view. West Bengal Chief Minister Buddadeb Battacharjee whose party controls the largest trade union of jute workers, Bengal Chatkal Mazdoor Union (BCMU), advised BCMU leader Gobinda Guha not to press all of workers demands. Guha himself told the press: "The chief minister heard our demands when we met him and said that it would be difficult to have the entire settlement..."

One political party that advised its unions to act as scabs against striking workers was right-wing Trinamul Congress (TMC) although it has for long been posturing as opponent of the CPI-M's pro-market policies. TMC proclaimed it does not subscribe to methods of "work disruptions". Its leader Mamata Banerjee is already trying to en cash scabbing by her party by soliciting money from big business houses.

Workers' Militancy Derailed by Trade Union

Role of the unions becomes clear when during any generalized workers' struggle; they are seen preventing contacts between workers in different factories, falsifying demands of workers, using  lies and slander to get workers back to work.

The present strike, despite seething anger of the workers, was controlled by the unions from the very beginning. Further, unions were able to keep jute workers isolated from other workers in Kolkatta and to keep them passive, promising that they, the unions, will negotiate to get their demands fulfilled.

In reality agreement reached between bosses, unions and the government was a complete sellout in every aspect. Not only workers got a paltry wage increase, even their back wages are not being paid. These are proposed to be paid in instalments over several months. Even part of their current wages, their dearness allowance (DA) will not be paid with their monthly wages but only on quarterly basis.

In addition, unions agreed to enforce a no-strike clause for next three years. Mr. Guha, the leader of BCMU, told the media: "There will be no strike for the next three years." This guarantee ensures that employers will have a free hand to make further attacks on jobs, wages and living conditions of jute workers.

This betrayal by unions has left the workers, who got no wages for the strike period, seething with frustration and anger.

Workers' Anger Explodes in Violence

A few days after the strike ended, this anger exploded in workers violently attacking unions and the bosses.

On Thursday, 4th March 2010, one of the mills, Jagaddal Jute Mill in North 24-Parganas started a new offensive against workers. It tried to transfer work being done by permanent workers to contract workers. This was spontaneously resisted and stopped by workers who ignored local union leaders. To intimidate and crush the workers and introduce more contract work, next morning as the workers came for morning shift at 06.00AM, the management shut the gates on workers and declared suspension of work.

This sent a wave of shock and anger among thousands of workers employed by Jagaddal Jute Mill who have gone without wages during long period of strike that had recently ended. Without waiting for or asking the unions, workers started a demonstration in protest against this attack by the bosses. They demanded that shutdown should be withdrawn immediately and workers allowed to go in and work.

During this time, a 56 year old worker, Biswanath Sahu died of shock and heart attack. This naturally infuriated the workers further who attacked a manager. But main anger of the workers was against the unions. Workers were convinced that both the unions in the Mill, CITU and INTUC belonging to ruling CPM and Congress respectively have connived with the bosses in this latest attack on them and in shutting down the mill. Angry workers ransacked offices of both CITU and INTUC. Workers attacked the house of Mr. Barma Singh, leader of Congress controlled INTUC. Leader of CPM controlled CITU, Mr. Omprakash Rajvar, was beaten up for defending the management. Later the union leaders and personnel manager were saved from workers anger only when a large contingent of police arrived and resorted to violent repression and baton charges against the workers.

While we believe this violence did not advance the struggle of working class, there is no doubt that mass violence witnessed in Jagaddal Jute Mill expressed anger of workers against bosses and union betrayals.

How to Move Forward

Jute industry has already been in difficulties and now it, like all other sectors, cannot escape the impact of intensifying global crisis. The mill owners are bent on not only maintaining but constantly increasing their profits and they can achieve this only by further intensifying exploitation and attacks on living and working conditions of the workers. Jute workers have a very long history of struggles. They have often launched militant and heroic struggles. But as their recent and many previous strikes show, jute workers can defend themselves and advance their struggles only by linking up their struggle with other workers belonging to other sectors and industries. Also, they cannot limit their distrust of unions to remain passive or to take the form of undirected violence. They have to develop a clear consciousness of perfidious role o unions and try to take their struggles out of union control and into their own hands. This is the only way to move forward.

Nero 2/5/10

In the World Cup opening ceremony at Soccer City, Johannesburg, five fighter jets flew over, suitable symbols of South Africa's military and economic strength in relation to the rest of the continent. Because of traffic snarl-ups many missed the beginning of the opening match - demonstrating that, despite extensive pre-tournament investment, getting from A to B can still be a serious headache. And if you were to look at the spectators in the seats (and the 184 suites) you would have seen only fans from abroad or those South Africans rich enough to be able to afford tickets. For the majority of people in South Africa the World Cup will be just something seen on TV, if at all, in a country where there are fewer than 120 TVs per 1000 people, where literally millions don't even have electricity, while the rich have generators in case of power cuts.

Before the World Cup there was all the usual hype about how it would benefit the country, just as with every Olympics. Yet, for all the more than six billion dollars worth of investment in stadiums, roads, airports and other projects, there has been very little that will benefit the vast majority of the population, and a lot of expensive white elephants that will start gathering dust from the day after the World Cup Final. One of the priorities of the government has been to strengthen the repressive apparatus, increasing police numbers, getting dozens of new helicopters, a hundred new BMW police cars, and more water cannon. During June/July there will be 41,000 police involved in ‘security' and 56 special courts available countrywide.

Maybe 150,000 jobs were temporarily created in World Cup related projects, but, with 40% unemployment, 70% living below the official poverty line, hundreds of thousands homeless and millions more in shacks without basic services, a widespread lack of clean or running water, sanitation (that means toilets mostly), decent roads or reliable transport, the wealth of South Africa remains concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority. It might be a cliché, but it's true to say that, under the ANC government, South Africa has one of the greatest disparities between rich and poor in the world, one of the most obvious examples of this class-divided capitalist society.

In the preparations for the World Cup hundreds of thousands of poor people were moved from their homes to make way for stadiums. The forced removals of black people by the state is reminiscent of the days of apartheid. It is not in fact unique to South Africa as it is estimated that more than 2 million people have been displaced by Olympic projects during the last 20 years. Something distinctive about one of the South African sites was that two schools were bulldozed to make way for the Nelspruit stadium, a decision that involved extensive corruption and was the subject of sustained protest.

For those shifted from their homes there has been little re-housing, with people ending up at places like Blikkiesdorp ("tin can city") 30 miles from Cape Town, a huge shanty town of corrugated iron shacks, a basic dumping ground for the poor, one of a number that the local press have called "concentration camps". In the Cape Town area there are 300,000 awaiting housing, only some of them ‘lucky' enough to be in Blikkiesdorp, or the "Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Area" as it is officially known.

The working class at the point of production has not been quiet in the build up to the World Cup. There were many strikes on the sites during their construction for 2010, most of them not sanctioned by any union. The most dramatic of these involved 70,000 workers in a week-long strike last July. One of the most important recent expressions of the class struggle occurred at that time, when there were strikes in the chemical, pharmaceutical and paper industries as well as by 150,000 municipal workers. These had been preceded by massive protests in the townships against the lack of basic services. A government minister said that there would be an end to shanty towns by 2014. There is a greater chance of New Zealand winning the World Cup. More recently there have been strikes by transport, power and workers in other industries. It's also interesting to note that last August in Pretoria there were running battles between soldiers protesting about pay and conditions, and armed riot police - an illustration that military regimentation goes only so far with workers in uniform.

The South African ruling class, with the ANC at its heart, hopes that the World Cup will bring the country good publicity. "South Africa wants to present itself as a top tourist destination to World Cup fans, and ridding the streets of homeless people seems to be an important part of the preparations in many of the nine cities hosting matches. In Johannesburg, one official bluntly acknowledged the city's intention to chase away homeless people, saying, ‘You have to clean your house before you have guests'"(npr.org). They might briefly be able to hide the homeless, but ultimately nothing can obscure the class divisions in post-apartheid South Africa. 

Car 12/6/10

In the future, in a real human community, there will surely be football. The elimination of economic and military competition from the basis of society does not imply that people won't still want to play team games, and football has proved itself to be the most compelling team game of all.

But there won't be any nation states, so the World Cup in its present form will have been consigned to the Museum of Football History (possibly the one in Preston).

That's if we reach such a society - which we absolutely need to do if humanity has any chance of surviving and flourishing.  And if we don't, the continuing grip of nationalism will certainly be one of the factors that will have doomed us to sink into an inferno of endless wars and ethnic conflicts.

International sporting events like the World Cup are the perfect vehicle for stirring up nationalism. As in the current Carlsberg TV ad, the ghosts of Agincourt and Bobby Moore are conjured up from the dead to lead ‘11 English men' to victory over the foreign foe....Meanwhile (at least until England get knocked out) the country will be awash with flags of St George and the likes of the English Defence League will seize the day to step up their marches against the imminent danger of our country being taken away from us by Islamic terrorists (or just Muslims, or blacks, or foreigners in general).

Some will reply: lighten up. It's all good harmless fun. After all, not everyone who waves the Crusader's flag is a xenophobe or a fascist. There will be plenty of black people and Asian people supporting England.

And indeed, it's not likely that the World Cup itself will have a very deep or lasting impact in Britain, or that the nationalist hysteria it generates will end up in much worse than a few sordid examples of racist bullying and violence against those perceived as the non-English. But there are plenty of examples to show that football, or rather its manipulation by the media and political factions, has been a key factor in whipping up real and very bloody conflicts.  Last year's qualifying match between Egypt and Algeria for this World Cup is a good example. Six Algerian fans were killed in the chaos that followed the match in Cairo and 21 Algerians injured. 23 Egyptians were injured in Khartoum, and on top of this 14 Algerians died and hundreds were wounded in Algeria in post-match celebrations. In addition to the violence around the actual match many of the 15,000 Egyptian workers living in Algeria were attacked and felt forced to flee. Thousands of Egyptian supporters also fought running battles with the police in central Cairo, resulting in 11 police and 24 protesters being injured, 20 people arrested and 15 vehicles damaged. Some fans, unable to reach the Algerians, pelted the nearby Indian Embassy with stones. In addition to this there were widespread clashes between North Africans living in France.

Although the bourgeois media condemns events like this the very tone that they take shows a completely different reaction to the one they had at the time of the massive strikes in Algeria two years ago. Then the full fury of the state, and all its repressive apparatus, were turned against the working class, showing the fear within the ruling class. After the football match there were a few gentle words of condemnation and appeals for calm.

This is far from the worst events that we have seen at a football match though. Back in 1990, one of the events that was part of the build up to the wars in ex-Yugoslavia was the match between Dynamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade. Of course wars are not started by football matches. Nevertheless such public demonstrations of nationalist hatred are used as a way to mobilise the working class for war. The match ended up in a pitched battle between rival Croatian and Serbian nationalist gangs, the Serb one led by Arkan, a Serb nationalist later indicted by the UN for crimes against humanity. The police were quickly overwhelmed by the large numbers, but later returned with reinforcements, armoured vans and water cannons to join in the violence. After an hour with hundreds of injured, some shot, some stabbed and some poisoned by tear gas, the fighting subsided. The wars, in which over 60,000 people died were about to start, and Arkan's Tigers, a militia based on Red Star supporters, played a role in some of the worst cases of ethnic cleansing. Zvonimir Boban, later to achieve massive fame with AC Milan, caught the limelight that day by attacking a policeman during the rioting. He later said he loved Croatia more than anything, and that he would die for his country. He didn't, but unfortunately tens of thousands of workers did.

Going back to 1969, to the 1970 World Cup qualifiers in fact, El Salvador and Honduras fought a war commonly know as the ‘Soccer War'. The match was the spark that turned an already tense situation into war. Following the second-leg match the media in both countries reported, exaggerated, and incited attacks of workers from the other country, and within a month the countries were involved in war, which although it only lasted for four days left over 3,000 dead, the vast majority of them civilians, and 300,000 refugees.

In the future, if we have a future, there will surely be football. But it won't be used to sell us back our own dreams, to turn respect for skill into the worship of stars and idols, to bind us to a false community where the exploited and the oppressed have the same interests as those that exploit us and oppress us, just because they were born inside the same national borders. 

Amos/Sabri 31.5.10

American imperialism is increasingly beset with problems all over the globe, from foe and so-called friends alike. Following the ‘go it alone' policies of the Bush administration, the election of Barack Obama 18 months ago was supposed to buy it time in order to establish firmer ground for its manoeuvres on the international arena. Obama's image as a ‘peacemaker' and his administration's approach of ‘co-operation', ‘conciliation' and diplomacy was an attempt to associate all the other major but secondary powers to its military enterprises and supposedly ‘hold out a hand' to its foes. As the international situation resolution in International Review 138, Autumn 2009 [106]says, despite the election of Obama, the USA's "objective is still the reconquest of US global leadership through its military superiority. Thus Obama's overtures towards increased diplomacy are to a significant degree designed to buy time and thereby space out the need for inevitable future interventions by its military which is currently stretched too thinly and is too exhausted to sustain yet another theatre of war simultaneously with Iraq and Afghanistan".

It now appears that the policies of engagement, cooperation and diplomacy trumpeted by Obama have, if they ever existed, given way to policies more like those of the Bush team, but further extended and refined to meet the increasingly dangerous demands of the world situation. They thus, in the longer term, contribute to the global instability they are trying to control. If an event could demonstrate this development it was probably the US invasion of Haiti after the earthquake at the beginning of the year, where the US stamped itself on all the attempts by other governments and their agencies to interfere in America's backyard. It was a clear and brutal message to all the other powers.

Apart from the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq being put on hold, and the "surge" of 30,000 extra US troops into Afghanistan just beginning, there are many other elements that point to the necessity for the increased assertiveness of US imperialism. The new strategy, presented as a clean break with the Bush doctrine of unilateralism, was set out in a 52-page report recently posted on the White House web site entitled ‘A Blueprint for Pursuing the World that We Seek', which is covered with Obamaspeak. Thus: "Our long-term security will not come from our ability to instil fear in other peoples but through our capacity to address their hopes".  The thrust of the policy is to engage with China, India and Russia, but the report also puts the dangers of cyber-terrorism high up the list, and this is a weapon mainly used by China. The US recently slapped down India hard for its own imperialist ambitions in Afghanistan and in relation to its tensions with Pakistan, forcing the Indian bourgeoisie to issue a strong riposte and go running to the Russians for solace. And tensions with Russia are ongoing in the Caucasus; they flared up during the unrest that led to the fall of the government in Kyrgyzstan, where both the Russians and the US have an air base.

Showing the basic continuity with the Bush regime, the report still reserves the right for the US to act unilaterally and does not rule out pre-emptive and exemplary retaliatory strikes. It will maintain military superiority everywhere and promote ‘democracy and human rights', which is directed against China, Iran and North Korea. This is not the ‘same old, same old' in respect to Bush's policies, but the refinement of these policies in order to make them more effective for US imperialism in more volatile circumstances. Underlying this, late last year, General Petraeus, head of US Central Command, signed an order sending troops on undercover operations on a wider and more persistent scale. Details are obviously sketchy but The Guardian (25/5/10) reports US military teams active in Iran, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Iran has repeatedly accused the US and Britain of sending in Special Forces to foment unrest among ethnic regional groups while undertaking their own operations. The Washington Post, 5/6/10, reports that US Special Forces are now deployed in 75 countries compared with 60 at the beginning of last year - when Obama took office. The paper goes on to say that Special Operations budgets have been raised under Obama and that SO commanders are much more present at the White House than they were during the Bush administration. One unnamed officer said that now "they are talking less and acting more". Also to this end, work has just started on an extended US base housing the USA's 5th Fleet, massively increasing its military capacities in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean.

Diplomacy as war

The transformation of covert operations, a la Rumsfeld, to ‘overtly covert' sanctioned operations, plainly stated by the administration, is part of the USA's declaration of war on its enemies and a warning to its ‘friends'. This is also the way that the Obama administration is using diplomacy - diplomacy as an aspect of war, as an aspect of imperialism. Thus when Japan's new leader, who won a landslide election for his Democratic Party last August, proposed a more independent role for Japan loosening the US yoke, and suggested (probably not seriously) the closing of US bases in Japan, this provoked a furious diplomatic response from the US administration, particularly over talk of closer Japanese links with China. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama was publicly humiliated on his visit to Washington, and Obama informed him, according to US press accounts, that "he was running out of time". Hatoyama seems to have cracked up under US diplomatic bullying, name-calling and exaggerated warnings about the consequences for Japan and the wider Asia-Pacific region and apologetically came back into line. So much for democracy and international cooperation!

Similarly, Brazil and Turkey were both slapped down by the US recently over the deal they brokered with Iran to ship the country's uranium to Turkey, despite the deal being similar to a UN-drafted plan that the US and its ‘allies' urged Tehran to accept last year. So much for the extended hand of friendship! Both countries also voted against the new UN package of sanctions against Iran, which the US has been working on for five months. The package includes "financial curbs, an expanded arms embargo and warnings to UN member states to be vigilant about a range of Iranian activities. Iran's national shipping company is targeted, as are entities controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, the backbone of the Islamic regime and keeper of its nuclear programme" (Guardian, 10/6/10).  Diplomatic channels have also been used by Secretary of State Gates (a Bush appointee in the previous administration) to berate the European powers for not contributing more of their money and military forces to assisting the US, and for not acting more in concert in supporting the US. Not a lot of chance of that while they are all at each others' throats.

Trouble, trouble, trouble

Aside from the wars in Afghansistan, Pakistan and Iraq, there are also growing problems presented by Iran, Turkey and Israel in this strategically key region. Emphasising the increasing impact of smaller powers since the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989, the fall-out with Israel is perhaps the most serious. After its outright defiance over the building of large new settlements, relations have further deteriorated over the recent killings on the so-called ‘aid to Gaza' ship, Mavi Mamara. US diplomacy has gone out of its way to show that it warned Israel "to show restraint when dealing with the six-ship convoy" (The Observer, 7/6/10). "We communicated with Israel many times regarding the flotilla. We emphasised caution and restraint", said the US State Department. A former US ambassador to Israel argued in the Washington Post, June 5, that for the US, Israel was an ally heading in a very different direction. Similarly Turkey appears to be consolidating a move away from the US in the general and increasingly more dangerous free-for-all in the region. From its refusal to allow the transportation of US troops across its territory n the war with Iraq, Turkey has been expressing a more independent line in relation to Iran and Syria. Following the killing of a number of Turkish citizens in the attack on the Mavi Mamara, the American brokered Turkish-Israeli alliance now appears dead in the water, as Turkey seems to be taking on the role of a rising power in the pro-Palestinian world.

There is also the so-called ‘arc of crisis' in the Horn of Africa and its surrounds which has the potential to become one of the world's ‘hot-spots'. US and British involvement in promoting Ethiopian militarism has backfired and the whole region is unstable, a growing base for Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Local rivalries involving Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and Sudan are interlinked and exploited by larger imperialisms. Across the Gulf is Yemen, an increasingly running sore for US imperialism made potentially worse by the increasing interest shown in the country by the US and Britain. From here there's a potential vector of terrorist and fundamentalist groupings, some of them linking up, going around the Horn of Africa, Northern Kenya, the Gulf and involving Saudi Arabia; a whole lawless region for the US sheriff to attempt to control.

 Away from this region, a further problem for the US was shown in the sinking of a South Korean warship in March by a North Korean torpedo. What this shows, along with the examples above, is that the lesser gangsters will feel tempted to push the American Godfather to its limits and the USA's ‘allies' will become even less reliable as they follow their own interests. Incidents and accidents in this irrational mix of imperialist rivalries can get out of control, putting even more pressure on the USA. One thing is sure: the US will not respond with ‘peace and reconciliation', to use the ‘humanitarian' vocabulary that Obama is so keen to deploy. It will respond with the brute force of militarism and war, thereby making very situation more dangerous, and liable to multiply imperialist conflicts across the face of the world. 

Baboon, 9/6/10

On 26 March this year, 46 South Korean sailors were killed when their war ship was hit by a torpedo - almost certainly fired from a North Korean submarine, although Pyongyang denies this. At the end of May, South Korea carried out large-scale naval manoeuvres close to the maritime frontier with North Korea. In response, the North Korean government accused Seoul of engaging in a deliberate provocation, aimed at sparking off a new military conflict. It threatened to put in place the military measures needed to defend its territorial waters, and the South would be held responsible for the consequences.

Military tensions between the two enemy sisters of the Korean peninsula go back a long way.  In the wake of the Second World War and the Yalta agreements that established their spheres of influence, the USA and the USSR decided in 1948 to partition Korea along the line of the 38th parallel. But under the pretext of ‘liberating' Korea from the Japanese yoke, the two bloc leaders began to push forward their imperialist interests in the region, and the country became a focal point for their efforts to win control of South East Asia. This soon led to a direct, murderous conflict between the pro-Russian North and the pro-American South.  

The Korean war, a dark pre-figuration of the Vietnam war, showed what it meant to be under the ‘protection' of the US and Russian blocs. From 1950 to 1953, the US rained nearly 13,000 tons of bombs every month on the North, four times more than the amounts it had dropped on Japan. Meanwhile, the Russian and Chinese armies engaged in this war on a massive scale. After three years of destruction, the frontiers between the North and South had not changed by a flea-hop, but the US had affirmed its military superiority and its will to control Japan.

All this came at the cost of 2 million dead, three quarters of them in North Korea.  Korea's entry into post-war history showed the place it now occupied on the global chess board and would do for the next 50 years. Well before the collapse of the Russian bloc, China, which had started off under Moscow's wing, had moved away from it in the 60s, and following the Nixon-Mao accords in 1972, toward the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, China took significant steps towards integration into the American bloc.  Beijing then increasingly succeeded Moscow as North Korea's patron but this didn't really turn out to America's advantage, since the Chinese now used North Korea as a means to put pressure on the US, particularly after the American bloc had ceased to have any real existence. Thus, Washington's identification of North Korea as a rogue state from the 90s onwards was a means of exerting its own pressure on China. After 2001, North Korea was ‘promoted' to the "Axis of Evil" by the Bush administration.  

The recent clashes in this still-divided country are thus a new episode in the growing confrontation between the US and China. But neither China nor the US have an interest in the situation degenerating below a certain level. China does not have the means to wage a military offensive against an enemy which, in the last instance, is the USA. And despite the North's repeated threats against its ally in Seoul, the US has no interest in provoking a country linked to China, since this could result in an irreparable destabilisation of the region.  However, while the two main powers are seeking to keep the situation under control, the pressure they are exerting on each local government runs the risk of pushing the latter into an irrational flight into ‘every man for himself' and militarism. In particular the isolation of North Korea has resulted in threats to make use of its nuclear weapons. The current situation is thus intensifying the climate of terror hanging over the heads of all the populations in the region.

The balance of strategic forces in this region remains very fragile and precarious. This means that both North and South Korea continue to exist as more or less militarised societies where there is a constant and unbearable pressure on the proletariat, whose struggles are all the more courageous and exemplary for that. 

Mulan  8/6/10

On 20 April 2010 an explosion rocked the floating rig Deepwater Horizon about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The rig finally sank on Thursday, April 22, causing the worst oil spill in history and leaving the blown-off drill pipe gushing millions of gallons of oil and methane gas into the ocean every day. This has been going on for almost one month at the time of writing, and will go on for an unforeseen number of months to come. This oil spill adds to the long list of ecological catastrophes caused by capitalism's blind rape of the planet as it searches for ever cheaper ways to maintain a competitive edge. It also reminds us of what's in store for the workers' future safety conditions. The explosion killed eleven workers, and comes in the wake of the recent explosion of a West Virginia coal mine which left 24 workers dead.

 At the level of the impact on the environment and the livelihood of the local people, the damage being caused by this disaster is immeasurable, and will last for decades to come. The ‘disaster prevention' agency set up by the capitalist state in the form of the Minerals Management Service has been exposed as totally corrupt and utterly inept. While its function was officially to make sure that pre-drilling operations were safe for the environment, and that the equipment used was safe for human lives, it was at the same time charged with collecting hefty royalties from the oil companies, a practice put in place in order to allow cheap costs of production to take precedence over considerations for the environment and human lives. In fact, the federal government fills its coffers with oil company royalties, and buys oil at a cheap price as the oil companies shift the economic burden onto the backs of their workers by cutting costs and more and more disregarding safety measures. This is reminiscent of the role of the state agency that was supposed to deal with the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, FEMA. The total bankruptcy of these bodies put in place by the capitalist state is so evident that president Obama has decided to split the MMS in two. One part of it will now collect the royalties while the other will supervise operations. This is how capitalism is trying to save face and mop up the mess.

Oil giant BP itself, as well as Transocean which BP contracted for labour, and Halliburton, contracted for equipment and some drilling procedures and material, blame each other for the disaster, in a daily mud-slinging match. BP is so confident in the force of its economic stature that it even pleaded to surpass federal government standard liability imposed in such cases. While the maximum penalty imposed is $75 million, BP has pledged $89 million. It does not say, however, that its revenues for the first quarter of 2010 were in the billions. BP's added self-imposed liability amounts to increasing our cable bill by about $5 a month for just a couple of months of the year. Halliburton, on its part, laughs at the supposedly ‘strict' penalties the capitalist state will pass against it because it knows its insurance will pay it about three times as much as it will have lost in revenues. And what about the ‘cleaning up' of the environment? Well, the Coast Guard is using oil boons! That's the equivalent of using Kleenex tissue to try and mop up the water from a flooded house.

These operations are so totally inadequate that residents of New Orleans anticipate that the oil from the spill will be dumped on shore during this year's just starting hurricane season, causing further devastation to an already impoverished and contaminated area. As for the bosses' regard for human lives, the explosion led to a night of terror for the men working on the rig, and an anxious night of waiting for their families. During the rescue operations performed under Coast Guard supervision, several oil workers contracted by Transocean, the Swiss-based company that owned the rig, were kept on board a rescue boat, watching the Horizon burn for about 12 hours before the vessel finally headed to shore, a trip that then took another 12 hours or so. One of the workers said, "They kept us there until almost 11:30 the next morning, letting us watch our buddies burn. We counted over 25 boats there. There was no reason to keep us there." They were pulled aside for tape-recorded interviews before they were allowed to see their families and were not given phones or radios to get in touch with them. It is obvious the authorities wanted to question the oil workers before they could speak with anyone on shore, the better to distort and obscure any inkling as to the truth of the ‘accident'.

All of this is enough to indict the moribund system we live in. But it doesn't end here. The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico is at least 10 times the size of official estimates. Expert findings suggest the BP spill is already far larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil, remnants of which can still be found today, 21 years later. Scientists' estimates, more accurate than the lies peddled by BP in its attempts to limit its liability and clean up its image as an ‘environmentally responsible' oil giant, put the amount of oil and gas spilled at between 56,000 and 100,000 barrels a day. This new, much larger, number suggests that capturing - and cleaning up - this oil will be a much bigger challenge than anyone has let on. BP keeps claiming the spill is 5,000 barrels a day.

Sure enough BP has a long history of violations, but it has many accomplices, the US state being the greatest. One of BP's largest refineries in the US exploded in March 2005 causing 15 deaths, injuring 180 people and forcing thousands of nearby residents to remain sheltered in their homes. The incident was the culmination of a series of less serious accidents at the refinery, and the engineering problems were not addressed by the management. Maintenance and safety at the plant had been cut as a cost-saving measure, the responsibility ultimately resting with executives in London. There have been several investigations of the disaster, and eventually the company pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the Clean Air Act, was fined $50 million, and sentenced to three years probation. On October 30, 2009, the US Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration (OSHA) fined BP an additional $87 million - the largest fine in OSHA history - for failing to correct safety hazards revealed in the 2005 explosion. Inspectors found 270 safety violations that had been previously cited but not fixed and 439 new violations. BP is appealing against that fine.

The list of violations by BP is endless, and the list of disputes between BP and the US government is impressively long. One has to wonder, then, why such an environmental charlatan as BP is allowed by the US to have 40% of its market in this country. In fact, by allowing very lax environmental and safety safeguards, the US is a prime accomplice in the disasters perpetrated by BP. It is certainly economically very convenient for the US to have to buy its own oil from a company that produces it at a low price. The US allows it to contract out parts of its labour - as BP did in this case with Transocean and Halliburton - and BP operates in US waters. Its record of malpractice, cost-cutting, use of old or malfunctioning equipment, and utter disregard for workers' safety make it possible for BP to produce at a low cost! The drawback is nonetheless serious: it is that the US is at a technological disadvantage in the modernisation of its own oil extracting and production apparatus in the context of an increased need for the cheapest sources of energy available, i.e. oil. This is what lies at the heart of the present proposed energy reform bill by the Obama administration. In the contest of the aggravating economic crisis, the US desperately needs to gain a competitive edge on the world market. The disputes have also involved the US and Britain over their involvement with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, for example, a thorn in the side of the US as it tries to gain control over resources which other countries - European states, China - also want. This is why we would be mistaken to believe that the actions by the US agencies aimed at penalising BP's worst behaviour are a reflection of the state's concern for the safety of the environment and human lives. On the contrary, the US is using these environmental disasters to clean up its own image as the champion of environmental protection and assert its authority in an industry which is vital to its competitiveness on the world market. It is effectively transforming such disasters into weapons of its own trade wars against other countries, in the case of BP, against Britain.

The US, like all other capitalist states, knows perfectly well that the dependence on oil will not be done away with any time soon under current capitalist conditions, and less so at the time of its most acute economic crisis. Oil is the only source of energy that can give it a competitive edge, regardless of the environmental or human cost. And above all, oil is absolutely indispensable as a weapon of war, the ultimate expression of capitalist competition - both because it is vital for fuelling your own war machine, and because control over its sources can be used to hamper the war machines of your rivals.

Capitalism will never be ‘green'. Its disregard for man and nature explodes each day more forcefully the bourgeoisie's mystifications and lies about its ability to bring a better tomorrow. The many images of dying wildlife, and the knowledge of the loss of human lives and livelihood resulting from this and other disasters, can only full us with horror and outrage, and a deep concern about the future. This event further exposes the utter irrationality of capitalism. It can prompt a fruitful reflection on the fact that human life and the planet are at a crossroads where there is a real possibility of the human species becoming extinct because of the continued existence of capitalism. It is high time we destroy capitalism, before it destroys us.  

Ana 22/6/10

When the LibDems and the Tories agreed on a coalition the French newspaper Le Monde quaintly described it as "A marriage of reason at 10 Downing Street" and a triumph for "British fair play." In reality, for all the horse-trading and manoeuvring that went on behind the scenes, and despite all the divisions and antagonisms, those involved in the negotiations were united in seeing the seriousness of their task because the formation of a governing team is an important moment for the ruling class.

Above all, the government has the role of defending the interests of the nation's capitalist class. It is essential that it is able to do this competently and effectively. To understand the reasons behind the change of government we need to understand the situation it has to confront.

The most important concerns for the British bourgeoisie at present are:

• Managing the crisis: This is the most violent economic crisis to have hit capitalism in its history: as serious as the Great Depression in terms of its underlying contradictions. It has manifested itself as the most brutal recession since World War II. The ruling class has managed to achieve a temporary stabilisation but it is clear that this is extremely fragile. The bourgeoisie needs a governing team that can effectively maintain stability and confront any new convulsions.
• Repair the damage: This stabilisation of the economy has come at an enormous price. While not yet immediately threatened with default, the UK has an enormous budget deficit which the bourgeoisie has to act quickly to curtail.
• Make the working class pay: The stabilisation gives the bourgeoisie the opportunity to carry out its only response to the crisis, that of attacking the working class. These attacks have already begun with the Emergency Budget heralding the most brutal assault on public spending in decades. By the Coalition's own admission, worse is yet to come. Capital will continue to attempt to increase its rates of exploitation. It is essential for the state to try to persuade the working class that these attacks are necessary, and deflect resistance with ideological and material force.

An essential element in this strategy is revitalising democracy. The expenses scandal which revealed widespread abuse of parliamentary expenses that were essentially funding MPs' personal luxuries created a very deep and widespread disillusionment with politicians. In the context of a situation where the bourgeoisie will be calling on the working class to make sacrifices it hasn't experienced for generations, this disillusionment could have stimulated a questioning among the exploited class. So, one of the key aims is to rehabilitate democracy, with talk of voting systems, accountability of parliament and a new ‘clean' politics.

The new line-up will also have to deal with the reorientation of British imperialist strategy as the conflicts of the last decade have exposed the weaknesses of British imperialism. This is in some respects a subsidiary problem compared to the coming (class) war on the home front, but as the international economic situation continues to be wracked with convulsions foreign policy will play an important role, especially in UK policy towards the Eurozone.

Coalition collaboration and division

Judging from the media, coalition talks were on a knife-edge, with the LibDems negotiating with both Labour and the Conservatives in turn. There was a general presumption that Labour were more natural bedfellows for the Liberals than the Tories. Certainly, the LibDems style themselves as ‘centre-left' and ‘progressive' but there are, in fact, two distinct wings within the party: the ‘market liberals' and the ‘social liberals'. The latter were dominant under Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy, but since the 2005 election there have been signs of the market liberals reasserting themselves with the publication of the The Orange Book - a collection of essays advocating ‘free market' solutions for many aspects of public policy. Many key contributors are now at the centre of the LibDem leadership: Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Chris Huhne, and Ed Davey. The dominance of this faction within the LibDems clearly helped pave the way for the new coalition.

Right from the start of the Coalition there have been reports of the inevitable divisions, with former leaders such as Kennedy and Ashdown openly expressing their doubts. There have also been mutterings, especially from the Tory right, about the new conditions for dissolving parliament. The stability of the Coalition could certainly be in doubt as there are a whole host of divisions concerning Europe, defence, etc. that could easily result in fractures.

However, for the moment, these potential fissions are not the driving force. The bourgeoisie will use the window of opportunity to drive through the enormous cuts required, using the cover of the Liberal Democrats' ‘progressive' credentials to try and soften the blows. The fact that the Governor of the Bank of England has already voiced his support for the £6 billion of cuts announced, shows the primacy the bourgeoisie has given to this aim. The coalition may or may not last the full 5 years - what really matters is what it can achieve in the next 18 months.

The Labour Party, gone but not forgotten

Labour's loss was no surprise. Although there was a real increase in poverty under Labour, for the most part this was masked, even for the majority of the working class, until the latest outbreak of the economic crisis. The bourgeoisie was largely pleased with Labour's capacity to manage the economy, but it was less than impressed with its management of Iraq and Afghanistan, its growing internal feuding which contributed to its losing sight of the national interest.

Most importantly, Labour could no longer pose as the bringer of ‘renewal' to British politics. Also, keeping Labour in power to bring in massive spending cuts would have annihilated its ability (already much reduced in recent years) to claim to be a defender of the working class. In addition, since the election Labour have become useful scapegoats for the state of the British economy.

Opposition will give Labour a chance to revitalise itself, to continue to pose as the champion of public services, and criticise the very austerity policies that it would have been compelled to impose had it retained power. Some turn to the left seems inevitable, although none of the candidates for the Labour leadership offers much that is different from the ‘New Labour' mainstream. A candidate of the left will not be the new Labour leader, but the left in the unions will continue to be an important influence.

Ultimately, the trajectory of the Labour party will be determined by the class struggle. A powerful response from the working class to government austerity measures will increase the pressure for a Labour left-turn. This idea of a ‘real alternative' would serve the needs of the bourgeoisie. However, if the Coalition proves to be unstable, Labour needs to be ready to return to government. This could be difficult with a strong left-turn, but not impossible. After all, it's a ‘socialist' government unleashing the austerity programmes in Greece.

Difficulties ahead

One of the immediate aims of the Coalition has been to defend the LibDems from the backlash they are already getting through their participation in the Coalition. Many supporters voted LibDem to either keep the Tories out or because they genuinely believed in the ‘new politics'. As a result, a number of LibDem policies clearly aimed at the lowest-paid workers have been adopted, such as the raising of the tax thresholds, meaning the lowest paid workers will pay less tax. This is despite the fact that the plans to drastically curtail working family tax credits adopted by the Coalition are, in fact, LibDem policies and are far more ruthless than those of the Tories. The new government is playing the ‘anti-poverty' card early on, in order to mask the full extent of the austerity that is to come. It's also important in trying to stop LibDem voters from feeling betrayed

Nonetheless, the ‘new politics' promised by Cameron and Clegg is a strong theme that can develop into a more overt call for national unity as the cuts begin to bite - ‘if we can sink our differences and work together, then so must the whole country'.

One example of this is the attempt to involve public sector workers in choosing what to cut. This plays to important themes about democracy and the idea that ‘we're all in this together'; as is Clegg's project of asking the public what laws should be cut.

There will also be a more hostile posture towards the class struggle. The policy of using the courts to outlaw strikes seems set to continue as the ongoing saga at British Airways demonstrates - new ‘anti-union' laws are also a possibility. Strikes will be presented as the selfish action of particular interest groups (‘well-paid' public sector workers, BA cabin crew, etc.) with a hard-line government ‘protecting' the public. This will allow struggles to be diverted into a defence of the unions and false campaigns about the ‘right to strike', rather than actually carrying out effective strikes which are, by definition, illegal anyway. However, the austerity regime will also show more starkly the real situation of the working class - that even minimal demands cannot be tolerated by crisis-ridden capitalism. That things seem impossible within capitalism can lead to paralysis - but it may also push forward the understanding that a new social order is required.   

QPCR 10/7/10

The Saville report into the events of Bloody Sunday has been widely praised for its findings. The report cost nearly £200 million and took 12 years to complete. David Cameron's apology has led to calls for him to be given the freedom of Derry. Has the world been turned upside down or is there something more cynical going on?

The tribunal set up by Tony Blair as part of the Northern Ireland peace process in 1998 and led by Lord Saville looked at the events of Sunday 30 January 1972.

The march to the Guildhall in Derry city centre was organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, a group formed to campaign for Catholic equality in Northern Ireland. During 1971 the Northern Ireland government imposed internment without trial for those accused of paramilitary activity. Only nationalists appeared on the list, many of them not members of the IRA. The march was organised in protest against the new law. The authorities decided to contain the march within the Catholic areas of the city. The British army were sent in to stop the marchers from proceeding and contain any potential trouble.

Soldiers from the First Parachute regiment opened fire on protesters who they claimed had opened fire on them. Thirteen people died of their bullet wounds on the day. None of the victims were carrying weapons, evidence was later fabricated. The British government ordered an inquiry. The subsequent Widgery report into the events of that day cleared the army of any wrong doing. It was widely seen at the time and since as a complete whitewash.

Even though there were killings that were carried out with more ruthlessness and premeditation before and after, Bloody Sunday became an iconic event in the conflict.

The Saville report overturned the findings of the Widgery report. Saville's report stated:

"The firing by soldiers of 1 PARA on Bloody Sunday caused the deaths of 13 people and injury to a similar number, none of whom was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury. What happened on Bloody Sunday strengthened the Provisional IRA, increased nationalist resentment and hostility towards the Army and exacerbated the violent conflict of the years that followed. Bloody Sunday was a tragedy for the bereaved and the wounded, and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland."

The release of the Saville report was followed by a statement from Prime Minister David Cameron where he said he was "deeply sorry" for what had happened. The report has been well received by almost everyone apart from the Army and some Unionist politicians.

The apology from the British Government should be taken with a pinch of salt. Any thought that the state is moving towards a fairer and less repressive approach can be quickly dispelled. In a parallel with the internment policies of the early 1970s in Northern Ireland the new Coalition government will continue with the previous Government's policy of detaining terror suspects without charge. In Birmingham the police have, temporarily, postponed the "installation of 169 automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras, 49 CCTV cameras and 72 ‘covert' cameras in two predominately Muslim areas in Birmingham." (Guardian, 6/7/10). The Northern Ireland Assembly is considering passing a law which requires any parade, protest or assembly, where more than 50 people may be present, to give 37 days notice to the authorities.

While its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan confirms that British imperialism has far from forsaken the military option, it will continue to use mechanisms of democracy to cover its tracks. So, for example, we can look forward to a new inquiry looking into the involvement of the UK secret services in the torture of suspects in the ‘war on terror'. Whatever the report ends up saying it won't change the brutal reality of British state terror

If the British state hasn't changed its spots why has Cameron apologised for its actions in 1972? The answer lies in the ‘peace process' that fosters the image of ‘peace and reconciliation' in Northern Ireland while fundamental antagonisms still exist.

While the ‘troubles' continued there were opportunities for Britain's imperialist rivals to undermine Britain's control of Northern Ireland. The IRA turned to the US and Libya at various times. The need to maintain the peace in Northern Ireland is more important than ever as Britain has been weakened by the economic crisis and its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Britain can't afford to wage another war in Northern Ireland and fight for its imperialist interests in the Middle East and beyond.

The pressure on the UK internally and externally can only increase. The British bourgeoisie is caught with the need to attack the working class at home and defend its position internationally with less resources.

In Northern Ireland there still exists, not far below the surface, intense sectarianism and the day to day intimidation and violence carried out by loyalist and republican gangs, passing mostly unreported. The discovery of bombs in an abandoned van outside a police station in Aughnacloy and in a beer keg beside a road near Keady in Armagh shows that the threat of a return to conflict still exists.  

Hugin 1/7/10

How can workers defend themselves against redundancies, pay freezes, worsening conditions at work and cuts in public services? The scale of the attacks launched against the working class, both before and after the election (see "Austerity budget: the enemy steps up the class war [115]"), make it clear that there is no option but to fight. But it takes courage to strike in the present climate of rising unemployment and victimisation by bosses and government and the level of action in Britain remains at a historically low level according to official statistics. However, recent strikes and threats of action show that there is growing anger within the working class but also that the will to struggle is developing.

This courage and will, which is the first requirement if workers are to defend themselves, is exemplified by the workers at BA who have remained united and determined in the face of all the attacks from the bosses with majorities of 80 and 90% supporting action. Tube maintenance workers in London went on strike for a day in London at the end of June, again in the face of legal threats from the bosses, and more action may follow. Last year, the workers at Visteon and Vestas showed enormous courage in taking action in the face of redundancies (see WR 324 [116] and 327 [117]).

The need for unity across the working class

However, anger and militancy are not enough on their own. The BA strike may now be entering its final stages with a deal being put to the workers that will give the bosses the job cuts they want and the right to force new workers onto worse pay and conditions. The resistance to the victimisation of the workers, through the withdrawal of travel rights and the use of disciplinary action, which has now become the focus of the strike, is part of the struggle but was not the reason for taking action. However, the deal being put to the BA workers has worse implications than the loss of pay and harsher conditions of work since it may create a divide between workers. As we argued in the article on the strike in the last issue of World Revolution [118], the efforts to divide and isolate the flight attendants has been a feature of the strike. This has been a deliberate strategy of the BA bosses who have created a climate of fear so that workers are not sure who they can trust.

The old lesson that unity is strength has been bitterly learnt and re-learnt by the working class. We have seen it recently with the postal workers who have gone from wildcat strikes that created a dynamic force of unity and strength to separate days of action that dissipated their energy and undermined unity. This is not new. Some 25 years ago the miners' strike ended in defeat because the workers, for all their inspiring courage and class solidarity, struggled alone. This tells us that groups of workers, even when as large and united as the miners were, cannot succeed on their own. This is all the more true in times such as the 1980s and today when the class war is intensified by the bourgeoisie as it makes the working class pay for the crisis of its economic system. In Britain, we have seen the oil refinery construction workers wage a successful struggle by extending the struggle across sites and employers and across different nationalities, despite the nationalism expressed by some of the strikers.

Workers in the public sector face not only the prospect of 600,000 redundancies according to Treasury projections (and must fear more given the comprehensive spending review). The ‘reform' of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme will savage redundancy arragements for civil servants. Talk of the ‘gold-plated' conditions of civil service workers is countered by the Mark Serwotka of the PCS saying this compensates for pay which is on average 7% lower than in the private sector. Both sides are attempting to isolate and divide public and private sector workers when all are under attack and the only way to resist is to unite.

This effort to extend the struggle is a feature of some of today's struggles. Thus, in Spain workers at the shipyards in Vigo joined with unemployed workers (see ICConline - March 2010 [119]) while in Turkey workers at the Tekel tobacco company tired to link with workers in sugar factories facing the same state-led attacks (see ICConline - January 2010 [9]). Tekel workers also posed the question of the need to take control of their struggle away from the union, and since then a minority of workers have organised to discuss the lessons and how to take it forward. More recently we have seen large strikes in Greece and demonstrations in other countries against the austerity measures of the ruling class.

Workers can only unite across all the divisions imposed by capitalism if they take control of their own struggles, something we have seen workers attempt to do in several struggles. At the start of their struggle last year workers from Vestas organised themselves without any union involvement, but when the union did come in they started to isolate the workers, preventing anyone else joining the occupation. Time and again unions keep workers divided. This is not because the unions have bad leaders who sell the workers out but because unions have become part of capitalism. In the nineteenth century workers created unions to fight for their demands. From the First World War  in the early 20th century unions were recuperated into the capitalist state apparatus.

From class unity to class consciousness

Ultimately, the unity that we must strive for goes beyond industries and sectors, beyond ethnic groups and countries, to reach across the whole working class. This dynamic inevitably brings workers face to face with all of the forces that seek to divide them, both obvious enemies like the courts and the state as well as supposed allies, like the unions and the parties of the left, the ‘socialists' and ‘communists'. This requires workers to take the final step: to develop their understanding of what they are fighting against and what they are fighting for. To know who their enemies are and who are their comrades. In short, to develop their class consciousness.

Today there are a million false explanations and solutions for the economic crisis. We are told it is the fault of the bankers, the speculators, the regulators, or the government, or even to the greed of parts of the working class, such as in Greece, who are unwilling to work until they die. We are told that we just need a bit more of Keynes, or a tax on financial transactions or the renewal of manufacturing or that the cuts could be found elsewhere, such as by closing tax loopholes according to one of Unite's bosses. The same union has also been happy to help BA find the savings it wants to make - at the expense of the workers.

As we show elsewhere in this issue, the present economic crisis doesn't come from this or that part of capitalism but from its heart. Economic crisis is not some temporary aberration but the way of life of capitalism. Time after time the working class pays the cost in lives ruined and hopes crushed. The truth is we have all the resources, all the technology, all the skills and knowledge and all the people necessary for every human on earth to have all the food and drink, shelter, education and healthcare necessary to lead a meaningful life. What stands in the way of this? Profits - and the economy and society that produce these profits. As workers' struggles develop, the possibility of ending the profit-based world for one based on human solidarity gives a perspective for our struggles. With will, unity and consciousness every obstacle on the way can be overcome.  

North 09/07/10

Austerity regimes like that gradually being reinforced in Britain are being imposed across Europe. The continuing strikes and demonstrations in Greece have been the most dramatic expression of a working class response, but they are only the most high-profile examples.

The fact that the Greek workers' struggle continues is important. By 8 July there was the sixth general strike this year. But the unions continue to have strikes on different days, the demonstrations are getting smaller in some places, and the government continues to bring in economic measures that extend the offensive on workers' current and future living standards. The demonstrations still express great anger, most recently, for example, against the latest pension ‘reforms'. And while bourgeois analysts suggest that a mood of resignation is beginning to set in and that there is the beginning of an acceptance of belt-tightening, the same experts also see people taking to the streets again as tax increases, wage cuts and other measures begin to have a greater impact.

In Spain on 8 June there was a major public sector strike with demonstrations across the country. This is hardly surprising when you consider the 5% cut in public sector wages that's been imposed. More specifically there has been an on-off strike on the Madrid metro in which there has been a strike committee that seems to be made out of union reps, but a general assembly that is capable of taking its own decisions. In the Spanish media there have been rumours of the possible militarisation of transport - shades of fascist Spain under Franco. For the future the unions are preparing for a national strike for 29 September, as at present they still retain the initiative, holding back the tendencies for workers to hold their own mass meetings and send delegations to other workers.

On 25 June there were major demonstrations in Rome, Milan and other Italian cities. The massive budget cuts include a three-year wage freeze for workers in the public sector. The approach of the unions in Italy is typical. Strikes in Piedmont, Liguria and central Tuscany were delayed until 2 July. In addition, consider the pleadings of Susanna Camusso, deputy leader of the CGIL, who told a march in Bologna "No one denies that we need to make cuts, but they must be cuts which are fair and look to the future, rather than just slashing spending" (Financial Times 26/6/10). The ruling class do indeed insist on the need to make spending cuts, and want the working class to pay the price for the crisis of the capitalist economy. There is nothing ‘fair' about impoverishment in a class society.

Strikes and demonstrations in France on 24 June against the proposal to raise the age for pensions to 62 were widespread across the country, but very much under the control of the unions. Although it is significant that workers from the private sector and many that are not in unions participated in the demonstrations.

In Romania on 25 June thousands joined protests in Bucharest and some workers in the public sector went on strike in protest at measures that are cutting wages and pensions.

On June 8, 40,000 people protested outside the Danish parliament against spending cuts that will hit many benefits, services and employment. As with many of the other demonstrations across Europe this was organised by a union federation.

Going back 8 months, on 24 November last year there was one of the biggest union strikes in Irish history with demonstrations against the Irish state's austerity measures across the country. Since then unions in Ireland have been voting for the Croke Park agreement which effectively means accepting a no-strike deal for the next four years in exchange for a very dubious economic package. Here the two faces of the unions can be clearly seen. On one hand they try to keep control over worker's discontent by channelling it into well marshalled demonstrations and divided strikes. On the other hand they sell state spending cuts.

The reason that the unions have been so recently active is that everywhere that the capitalist state is cutting budgets and attacking workers' living standards the working class is beginning to express its anger.  

Car 10/7/10

The impression that Russian imperialism is making more and ground in its immediate sphere of influence has been strengthened by a number of spectacular events recently: the rapprochement with the Yanukovych government in Ukraine and the signing of a an accord allowing for long-term Russian military bases there; the signing of a deal with Ankara for the construction of a Russian nuclear plant in Akkuyu in the south of Turkey; Medvedev's ‘brotherly' visit to Syria in May and the rumours that the elimination of the Bakiyev government in Kyrgyzstan was entirely to the advantage of Moscow. But is this actually the case?

Without doubt, the situation we saw in the 1990s is long gone. Then Russian experienced a very significant enfeeblement. It had lost all its old satellite states and, on the domestic front, under Yeltsin, entered an era of openly Mafia style functioning. The Russian state was urgently compelled to put both its internal and external affairs under the control of its apparatus. The accession to power of the bourgeois faction around Putin in 2000 was a significant sign of the effort to restore the strength of the Russian state and reinforce its imperialist policies.

But do the successes that Russia has achieved allow us to talk about a triumphant forward march of Russian imperialism? Not at all. In reality, Russia today is faced with a desperate struggle against instability in the region of the former eastern bloc. Instability and a loss of control are a general tendency, which most powerfully affects the USA, the world's leading gendarme. But Russia, which aims to maintain its role as leader in this region, and to draw long-term advantages from the weakening of the USA, is itself not able to escape this international dynamic.

Kyrgyzstan : the extension of uncontrollable chaos

At first sight, the overthrow of the government of Kyrgyzstan in April 2010 seems to mark a point for Russia in the imperialist game: the government clique around Bakiyev had broken its promise to Russia to close the country's American military base, so it would be easy to think that the new government clique around Otunbayeva was being placed in power with the official support of Russia, to take revenge on Bakiyev for breaking his word. But the situation in Kyrgyzstan is rather more complex. It's not possible to reduce it to a struggle between two bourgeois factions, one supported by the USA and the other by Russia, as was often the case in third world countries during the Cold War. It's wrong to imagine that with the overthrow of the Bakiyev government, the spoils automatically fall to Russian imperialism and the situation will calm down.

What we are seeing in Kyrgyzstan on the contrary is an extension of chaos and conflicts between national cliques. Russian imperialism is very far from emerging as the big winner in the situation. With the tensions in the south of the country, in the region of Jalabad and Osh, a phase of instability is opening up in a country which is both at the gates of Russia and shares a frontier with China - which is an increasingly aggressive imperialism. Kyrgyzstan is already an important point of entry for Chinese products into the markets of the CIS. But even if Russia and China are really bitter rivals over gaining influence in Kyrgyzstan, they still have a shared concern about this region: the development of uncontrollable battles between regional cliques, which often take the form of ethnic pogroms like the ones we have just seen in Kyrgyzstan.  And even the USA will not accept its military presence in Kyrgyzstan being put into question!  Kyrgyzstan is a country that is getting more and more difficult to govern because it lacks a unified national bourgeoisie. It is now a clear example of the danger of loss of control so feared by the great imperialist powers. The bloody pogroms in Osh this June clearly illustrate the delicate situation facing Russian imperialism: asked to provide military aid by the Otunbayeva government in order stem the chaos, Russia hesitated because it didn't want to get drawn into a second Afghanistan. Independently of the question of the local cliques in power, it is difficult for Russia, which is being shaken by the economic crisis, to intervene with the aim of maintaining its influence, given the enormous military costs involved. On top of this, Russia's efforts to play its role as regional imperialist gendarme are being undermined by the actions of a small imperialist hyena in the region, the Lukashenko government in Belarus which immediately tried to throw oil on the fire by offering asylum to the exiled Bakiyev. 

Election of Yanukovych in Ukraine: a great victory for Russia?

Without doubt, the elections in February 2010 in Ukraine brought to power a bourgeois faction which is much more open to Russia. In April, Ukraine signed a significant deal with Russia guaranteeing a Russian military presence in Sebastopol until 2042, and massive economic concessions for deliveries of Russian gas to Ukraine until 2019. In June, Ukraine took the decision to halt plans to enter NATO drawn up by the previous Yushchenko government. But relations with Ukraine are not at the point where Russia can pat itself on the back and they present it with a real dilemma. Even though Ukraine has been hit hard by the economic crisis and needs immediate financial aid, the Ukrainian state is not jumping once and for all into the arms of its big brother - and it is also asking for something in return from Russia. Russia has to reward the temporary goodwill of the Yanukovych government at the cost of the billions knocked off the price of gas, and this just to maintain its military presence in the port of Sebastopol. But the real imperialist needs and ambitions of Russia towards Ukraine go much further than the deal struck with the Ukrainian government. From the geographical point of view Ukraine represents a passage-way for the export of Russian gas to the west, and the Russian economy is highly dependent on this trade. To avoid this degree of dependence on Ukraine (and even on Belarus), Russia is obliged to undertake hugely expensive alternative routes like the Northstream pipeline. For Russia, a stable, long-term relationship with Ukraine is a necessity, not only on the economic terrain of the transport of gas, but above all on the geostrategic terrain, for its military protection. But Ukraine, with its deeply divided bourgeoisie, does not represent a stable partner and the Yanukovych government offers no guarantees in the long term. If the faction around Timochenko gets back into government, new frictions won't be long in following. For the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, which is motivated fundamentally by its own national interests, its current political orientation is not the expression of a deep love affair with Russia.  The weakness of the European Union means that a rapprochement between Ukraine and the EU is not an option for the former. It is economic necessity and the need to find the cheapest source of energy which is pushing Ukraine into a path so typical of imperialism today: immediatist, unstable and dominated by the ‘every man for himself' philosophy.

After the war in Georgia: no stability in sight in the Caucasus

Even though in the war against Georgia in 2008 Russian imperialism did gain ground by occupying new geographical zones, such as Ossetia and Abkhazia, and even though the USA was unable to intervene on behalf of its friend Georgia because it was bogged down in Iraq, Russian has in no way consolidated its position in the Caucasus.  Russia has not really been able to take advantage of the USA's weakness. This was basically the sign of a new stage in imperialist confrontations, since for the first time since the collapse of the blocs in 1989 the old rivals America and Russia were once again facing each other directly.

But this war also showed clearly that it is quite wrong to think that in the present stage of imperialism a war automatically produces a winner and a loser. In the end this war only produced losers. Not only from the point of view of the working class (which always loses on both sides of any imperialist conflict) but also among the imperialisms involved in it. Georgia has been weakened, so the USA has lost its influence in the region but Russia is confronted with an aggravation of chaos in the Caucasus which is proving impossible to calm down.

In many regions of the Caucasus, in official territories of the Russian Federation, such as Dagestan or Ingushetia, the armed forces of Russian imperialism play the role of an occupying force rather than of a deeply rooted state apparatus. But again the situation in this region is extremely complex: the Russian police and army have been acting in a very brutal manner, but in the end have proved powerless against the numerous local clans at each others' throats.

Apart from the necessity to defend its immediate strategic and economic interests, the aggressive stance of Russian imperialism also contains a historical dimension. Founded on a history of permanent expansion since Czarist times, Russia has today been squeezed back into a reduced territorial corset - a situation which its bourgeoisie cannot accept. 

The May terrorist attacks in Moscow, not far from the area of the city inhabited by the security forces, show that terrorist actions are aimed directly at the authority of the Russian state. The present efforts to increase the powers of the FSB are not a sign of strength but of fear. The situation in the northern Caucasus where Russia finds itself in a state of more or less open warfare in its own national territory - in other words, in a situation where it is constantly threatened with losing control and thus providing an example to other local cliques to start contesting its authority - shows that Russia too is caught up in a process of weakening. A situation like this is specific to Russia. Other big imperialisms like America or Germany don't face such problems in their own territory, or do to a lesser degree, like China. Even if Russia is struggling manfully to overcome the historical crisis it entered with the collapse of the Stalinist form of state capitalism, the development of centrifugal forces in its historical sphere of influence is continuing and getting worse.

The whole situation in Russia's sphere of influence is one more example of the total irrationality of capitalism today. Even if the ruling class arms itself to the teeth, it still can't control its own system.

Mario 29/6/10 

Since the fall of the Kyrgyzstan president Bakayev, exiled from the country following violent riots in the capital city Bishkek, the country has become even more unstable, culminating in a number of horrific pogroms, centred round the town of Osh, where the Uzbek minority was subjected to murder, rape, robbery and arson. 

What lay behind these pogroms?

The majority of the people carrying out the attacks were recruited from among the most lumpenised elements of a very poor population. But the operation was directed by a well-oiled machine, involving at least a part of the armed forces - many witnesses testified to the supportive presence of military vehicles and even uniformed soldiers during the massacre. The orders to carry out the slaughter clearly came from within the higher echelons of the state apparatus, which is the seat of warlords and Mafiosi-type bureaucrats. The ground had already been prepared by these sinister ‘officials', by a gangster ruling class which has long been preaching hatred between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. In this poisoned atmosphere, "some people began, in Osh for example, to mark out the homes of the sarts (a pejorative term for non-Kyrgyz)" (Courrier International no.1025). Then, on the basis of growing political tensions between the former opposition parties and the Bakayev clan, "the horrors committed by groups of provocateurs transformed these tensions into an inter-ethnic conflict" (Libération, 26 and 27 June 2010). The green light for this bloody offensive was given by masked men carrying out well-targeted attacks. The Uzbek homes previously marked out by zealous vigilantes were then burned down by hysterical crowds. It was due to the hatred that had been carefully fuelled by the bourgeois cliques that these crowds became uncontrollable, ready for any act, from simple pillage to rape and murder. One testimony brings to mind the worst moments of the conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s: "An Uzbek friend told me that a little girl of five had been raped in front of her father and 13 year old sister by a group of fifteen men. The father begged to be killed and he was. The sister went mad" (ibid).

Despite hastily erected barricades, the Uzbeks had little protection against this crazed mob and a soldiery drunk with vengeance. As the above testimony points out, the Uzbeks were often burned to death in their homes. Today, many Uzbeks who fled this nightmare have been forced to return because Uzbekistan is closing its borders to them. Only some women and children were able to get across the frontier, since the men were often suspected of being potential Islamist terrorists. These ‘lucky' ones are now rotting in refugee camps where there is a chronic lack of drinking water and food and cases of diarrhoea are on the increase. There can be no doubt that this chaotic situation will give rise to new murderous conflicts, to an accumulation of trauma and hatred. After this tragedy it will be very difficult for Kyrgyz and Uzbeks to live together.

Victims of imperialism

In Kyrgyzstan, as in most countries in this region of central Asia, the ruling class is torn by confrontations between different gangster clans, and has no hesitation in unleashing pogroms if it suits its sordid interests. There is evidence to suggest that, in this case, forces loyal to exiled president Bakayev were pulling the strings behind the pogromist thugs. But there are other forces acting behind the local cliques. The extreme tensions between rival bourgeois gangs are constantly being manipulated by the big imperialist powers squabbling for influence in this strategically important region.

Certainly the great powers have done little or nothing to help the victims of this ethnic cleansing. At least 400,000 people were forced to flee their homes but they are receiving precious little in aid. Worse still, the more powerful imperialisms are quietly preparing the way for future massacres: "the troubles in Kyrgyzstan are giving rise to a new phase in the chess game between Russia and the USA. Neither country has entered into action immediately but is waiting for the most opportune moment to mix in and score points. And China is not going to stand around with folded arms either".[1]

Since these powers don't hesitate to back one local clan against the other, we can say clearly that their activities in the region, their incessant search for spheres of influence, are a key factor in the barbaric events we have just witnessed, and will continue to witness as long as this decomposing social system is allowed to continue. 

WH 26/6/10

[1] See Courrier International 1025. It should be noted that both the US and Russia have military bases in Kyrgyzstan.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the complete absence of care and the incredibly dangerous character of the search and use of natural resources by capitalism.

Since the explosion on BP's floating platform Deepwater Horizon on April 22, where 11 workers lost their lives and about double that number were horribly injured, over $3 billion has been spent on the ‘clean-up' to date; at least 800,000 litres of oil per day has been discharged into the Gulf and threatens coastlines as far away as Cuba, Mexico, the Caribbean and possibly, given the submerged nature of much of it, may have reached the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic. No-one really knows the precise amount of contamination - methane is also escaping in volumes - but at the end of May, papers leaked from BP suggested that their original estimates of one and then five thousand barrels a day could in fact be one hundred thousand barrels with much of this remaining under the sea. BP CEO Tony Haward was correct to say that oil floats on water but, given the enormous pressures at the depth of the drill, it's likely that there are enormous slicks of oil moving underwater.[1] Even without the development of Hurricane Alex, the operation to plug the well, while being possible, needs to be very precise and is potentially extremely hazardous.

First investigations after the spill showed that "the Mineral  Management Service (MMS), the US administration service responsible for the supervision of oil production, gave its authorisations without carrying out any controls to the plan for security and compatibility with the environment (...) In this concrete case, the MMS failed to verify the capacity of the blowout preventer (a valve central to safety for the prevention of leaks [...] In the hydraulic element of this system there has manifestly been a failure. In fact, some hours before the explosion tests on it failed".[2] A worker who survived, subsequently reported that the preventer was leaking several weeks before the spill, that both BP and Transocean knew of it and that it was turned off rather than repaired.[3]

Other enquiries showed that there was no equipment to draw off any leaking oil and there were no means to undertake relief drilling in the case of an emergency. What does this attitude of exploiting oilfields at this depth, without any possibility of containing any possible leaks, reveal? "The oil platform Deepwater Horizon, at a cost of $560 million, was one of the most modern drilling rigs in the world capable of resisting hurricanes and waves 12 metres high".[4] The production costs for building such a platform are astronomical (more than half-a-billion dollars!) while the drilling costs hundreds of millions of dollars more, yet no safety system or emergency cover was put in place. How can you explain this?

Profit at the expense of nature

When the systematic search for oil began a century ago there was a need for only relatively weak financial and technical investments in order to exploit the resources. A century later however the petrol companies are confronted with a new situation.

"A great part of the global oil of the world has been exploited from fields found over 60 years ago without any large technological investment. Today on the contrary companies must use onerous methods for prospecting the fields, the more so given that they are found in relatively difficult areas that are hard to access from the land - and then only deliver quantities considered marginal up to now (...) Above all, western enterprises no longer have access to easy, cheap sources promising the type of production of Asia and Latin America. These sources are in fact in the hands of national petrol companies such as Saudi Arabia's Aramaco, Gazprom (Russia), NIOC (Iran) or PDVSA (Venezuela) and under control of these national states. These are the real giants in controlling three-quarters of the world's reserves.

"‘Big Oil', as the old private multinationals are still called, control hardly 10% of the reserves of global gas and oil. For the likes of BP this means that projects are onerous, costly and dangerous. It's thus necessary that these firms are pushed to their limits to reach these deposits that no-one else wants to explore..."

Greater costs, bigger risks

"It was some time ago that that the petrol companies abandoned platforms solidly anchored to the marine floor. Some floating monsters called semi-submersibles swam in the oceans with kilometres of water beneath them. Vertical canals of special steel or extremely hard composite material plunged into the obscurity of the depths. Normal conduits broke apart under their own weight. At 1500 metres water temperature is 5 degrees and oil gushed out almost at boiling point. Extreme constraints are exercised on the material as a result of this and the risks are considerable. At this depth the technical demands of drilling are much greater. The technique is dangerous: as the cement goes off fissures can appear through which oil and gas can escape under enormous pressure and it only needs a spark to start an explosion"[5] - which is exactly what happened.

Feverishly, tens of thousands of people have fought, vainly up to now, to hold the oil back from the beaches. Lockheed C-130 planes have dropped tonnes of Corexit, a product that is supposed to dissolve the layers of oil - although we can guess that this chemical cocktail can only damage the aquatic surrounds and beyond. We can also fear the unforeseen and still greater long-term effects on nature from this chemical rescue attempt. The economic effects are already devastating for the local populations with many pushed to ruin. But potential health effects on people close to oil spills are already known, with long-term risks to the central nervous system, kidney and liver damage and of cancer. And US worker safety rules only apply up to three miles offshore, leaving workers near the ruptured well even more exposed. BP had to be compelled to provide respirators and other protective gear to workers on the boats fighting the spill and protecting vulnerable populations on the land. But no respirators can provide enough protection - if you can smell it you're breathing it in. And many locals know the bay area as "cancer alley" from the illnesses put down to the constant pollution from the concentration of chemical and oil-related industries.

New exploitation of oil-fields demand greater investment and as a result of this still greater technical risks are taken. The conditions of capitalist competition lead rivals to show less and less respect to the protection of people and nature and this is the case where it's relatively easier to extract oil from the ground. In the Niger Delta independent experts have estimated  (The Observer, 20/6/10) that during the last 50 years there have been spills equivalent to an Exxon Valdez every 12 months. There are similar stories in Columbia, Kazakhstan and in Ecuador; in the latter, with an even more sensitive eco-system than the marshes of Louisiana, ‘toxic water' from drilling is estimated to be something like 470 times the amount of contamination spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

The thawing glacial caps of the poles, which are opening up the maritime passages of the north-west, and the unfreezing of the permafrost have sharpened the appetites of the petrol companies and provoked tensions between countries laying territorial claims to these regions. Whereas, in reality, the unbridled utilisation of non-renewable and fossil energy constitute a pure waste, and the search for new sources a complete absurdity, the economic crisis and the competition linked to it, lead firms to invest even less resources in the possible and necessary safety systems. Capitalism is pillaging the resources of the planet in a more and more predatory way. In the past, a ‘scorched earth' policy was a method of war. For example, in the first Gulf War of 1991 the United States attacked the oil installations of the Persian Gulf provoking enormous fires and monstrous leaks of oil. Now, it is the daily pressure of the crisis that leads to the practice of ‘scorched earth' and the contamination of seas and land in order to impose economic interests.

This current disaster was foreseeable - as was the catastrophe of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina flooded the town of New Orleans leading to the deaths of 1800 people, the evacuation of the entire town and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. The present event, like the New Orleans catastrophe, is the result of the incapacity of capitalism to offer sufficient protection against the dangers of nature. It is the product of the search to maximise profits undertaken by capitalism.

Dv/B 6/7/10

[1] Volumes of water polluted by particles of oil are found at these depths. Concentrations are at least one litre per cubic metre but the spread of these sheets are important (Wikipedia).

[2]  www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/us-oelpest-schwere-sicherheitsmaengel-vor-explosion-der-oelplattform-a-694602.html [125] and www.spiegel.de/speigel/01518,694271,00.html.              [126]

[3]  The Guardian, 22.6.10

[4]  See footnote 2.

[5]  Idem

August 29 sees the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans flood and the war subsequently declared by the US bourgeoisie on its innocent victims. If this event had happened in an underdeveloped country it would have been shocking enough, but to occur in the richest country in the world indicates the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. This event did for the Bush administration and, more than anything else, necessitated, for the sake of American democracy, the Obama candidature and his election to the White House.

Five years on, and in New Orleans rents are up, hospitals and care facilities are still lacking, every one of 7500 public-school teachers and other school employees have been sacked, public housing has been slashed by 80%, new housing projects have been pulled, 31% of properties remain unoccupied, the Charity hospital has been closed and aid promised by Democrat politicians has still not arrived. Some reconstructed housing had poisonous Chinese-made plaster which had to be removed at a cost of $160,000 a throw, while trailers, costing $70,000 each, provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from disaster funds, had so much formaldehyde in them that they were too toxic to sleep in. The US army corps of engineers has yet to provide a list of projects to protect the New Orleans and Louisiana coastlines from catastrophic hurricanes. The devastation from this ‘natural disaster' was mainly due to the badly maintained levees and the erosion of the protective wetlands due to speculative building. Louisiana is still losing 25 square kilometres of its wetlands each year and the Mississippi carries only half the land building sediment it did a hundred years ago - so problems in this area will get worse.

Investigations are continuing into a number of murders that took place. According to the New Orleans Police Department there were eight murders, but the actual number killed is still an open question, given the presence of Blackwater commandos (who talked of "securing neighbourhoods" and "confronting criminals"), various private security organisations, organised and unorganised vigilantes and an Israeli commando group called "Instinctive Shooting International". Over 46,000 National Guards arrived - in a town where around 30,000 people were stuck, mostly because they were too poor or too sick to get out - and some were still patrolling the town in 2007. The Army Times, 2/9/5 was headlined: "Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans".

The politically-correct mask of the bourgeoisie dropped and the media were overtly racist and contemptuous of the poor. Thousands of miles away, in the ‘liberal' Guardian (8/9/5), Timothy Garton Ash, regurgitating the ‘thin veneer of civilisation' claptrap, could describe the victims as "wild dogs" in "a war of all against all" and "most people revert[ed] to apes". But instead of the ‘social Darwinism' described by hacks like Ash, the main tendency among the poor and the victims was solidarity, mutual-aid and altruism. This included those from outside New Orleans and, in some notable cases, the police who worked with the gangs to provide assistance.

It wasn't a question of race but class. Black mayor Ray Nagin, who, with his cronies, holed up in a luxury hotel, lied that "hundreds of rapes and murders" were made by gangs and black police chief Eddie Compass told Oprah Winfrey, "We had babies in there (...) getting raped". ‘Looting' was played up (echoes of Haiti). Governor Kathleen Blanco called off search and rescue and said that troops had M16s "locked and loaded... and I expect they will [shoot to kill]". The warning given in 2004 about the lack of a credible evacuation plan was ignored by politicians of whatever hue and - again with echoes of Haiti - volunteers, truckloads of supplies and a floating hospital were turned away by FEMA. People were left in misery and filth and places like the Superdome and the Convention Centre were turned into prison camps surrounded by barbed wire, overlooked by snipers, while bridges and roads were manned by troops and police to prevent people escaping. War was declared on the poor of this great, pulsating city and New Orleans was turned into a toxic prison camp. This involved the terrorising of the victims of this disaster, a disaster that capitalism and its lackeys are responsible for. 

Baboon 6/7/10

Sources: A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit and The Observer Review 21/3/10.

For a few years now, certain anarchist individuals or groups and the ICC have overcome a number of barriers by daring to discuss in an open and fraternal way. Mutual indifference or rejection between anarchism and marxism have given way to a will to discuss,  to understand the positions of the other, and to honestly define points of agreement and disagreement.

In Mexico, this new spirit made it possible for a joint leaflet to be signed by two anarchist groups (GSL and PAM[1]) and an organisation of the communist left, the ICC. In France, recently, the CNT-AIT in Toulouse invited the ICC to make a presentation at one of its public meetings[2]. In Germany as well links are being made.

On the basis of this dynamic, the ICC has begun working seriously on the history of internationalism in the anarchist movement. During the course of 2009 we published a series of articles under the heading ‘Anarchists and imperialist war' [3]. Our aim was to show that with each imperialist conflict, part of the anarchists was able to avoid the trap of nationalism and defend proletarian internationalism. We showed that these comrades continued to work for the revolution and for the world working class despite being surrounded by chauvinism and the barbarity of war.

When you know the importance that the ICC attaches to internationalism, which is a real frontier separating revolutionaries who genuinely fight for the emancipation of humanity from those who have betrayed the proletarian struggle, these articles were not only an intransigent critique of the pro-war anarchists but also and above all a salute to the internationalist anarchists!

However, our intentions were not always well perceived. For a while this series met with a frosty reception in some quarters. On the one hand, some anarchists saw the articles as an outright attack on their movement. On the other hand, some sympathisers of the communist left and of the ICC did not understand our efforts to find a "rapprochement with the anarchists"[4].

Aside from certain errors in our articles which may have irritated some people[5], these apparently contradictory criticisms actually share the same roots. They reveal the difficulties in seeing the essential elements which bring revolutionaries together, above and beyond their disagreements.

Going beyond labels

Those who identify with the struggle for the revolution have traditionally been classed in two categories: the marxists and the anarchists. And there are indeed important divergences between them:

-         Centralism/federalism

-         Materialism/idealism

-         Period of transition or ‘immediate abolition of the state'

-         Recognition or denunciation of the October 1917 revolution and of the Bolshevik party

All these questions are certainly very important. It is our responsibility not to avoid them, and to debate them openly. But still, for the ICC, they do not demarcate "two camps". Concretely, our organisation, which is marxist, considers that it is fighting for the proletariat on the same side as the internationalist anarchist militants and against the ‘Communist' and Maoist parties which also claim to be marxist. Why?

Within capitalist society, there are two basic camps: the camp of the bourgeoisie and the camp of the working class. We denounce and combat all the political organisations which belong to the former. We discuss, often in a sharp but always a fraternal manner, and seek to cooperate with, all the members of the second. But under the same label of ‘marxist' there are genuinely bourgeois and reactionary organisations. The same goes for the ‘anarchist' label.

This is not just rhetoric. History is full of examples of ‘marxist' or ‘anarchist' organisations who have claimed with hand on heart to be defending the proletariat, while in reality stabbing it in the back. German social democracy called itself ‘marxist' in 1919 when it was assassinating Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and thousands of workers. The Stalinist parties bloodily crushed the workers' uprisings in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956 in the name of ‘communism' and ‘marxism'(in fact, in the interests of the imperialist bloc led by the USSR). In Spain, in 1937, the leaders of the CNT, by participating in the government, served as a cover for the Stalinist murderers who repressed and massacred thousands of ...anarchist revolutionaries. Today, in France for example, the same name ‘CNT' covers two anarchist organisations, one which defends authentically revolutionary positions (CNT-AIT) and another which is purely ‘reformist' and reactionary (the CNT ‘Vignoles')[6].

Identifying the false friends who hide behind labels is thus a vital task.

But we should not fall into the opposite trap and believe that we are alone in the world, the exclusive holders of ‘revolutionary truth'. Communist militants are still very thin on the ground today and there is nothing more harmful than isolation. We therefore have to fight against the tendency to stand up for your own ‘chapel', your own ‘family' (whether marxist or anarchist), against the shop-keeper's spirit which has nothing to do with the politics of the working class. Revolutionaries are not in competition with each other. Divergences, disagreements, however profound they may be, are a source of enrichment for class consciousness when they are discussed openly and sincerely. Creating links and debating on an international scale are absolute necessities.

But for this to happen, we have to know how to distinguish between revolutionaries (who defend the perspective of the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat) and reactionaries (those who, in one way or another, help to perpetuate this system), without fixating on the label of ‘marxist' or ‘anarchist'. 

What unites marxists and internationalist anarchists

For the ICC, there are fundamental criteria which distinguish bourgeois from proletarian organisations.

Supporting the combat of the working class against capitalism means both fighting exploitation in an immediate way (during strikes for example) while never losing sight of what's at stake in this struggle on the historical level: the overthrow of this system of exploitation by revolution. To do this, an organisation must never give its support, even in a ‘critical' or ‘tactical' way, or in the name of the 'lesser evil', to a sector of the bourgeoisie - whether the ‘democratic' bourgeoisie against the ‘fascist' bourgeoisie, or the left against the right, or the Palestinian bourgeoisie against the Israeli bourgeoisie, etc. Such an approach has two concrete implications:

1. Rejecting any electoral support or cooperation with parties which manage the capitalist system or defend this or that form of this system (social democracy, Stalinism, ‘Chavismo', etc)

2. Above all, during any war, it means maintaining an intransigent internationalism, refusing to choose between this or that imperialist camp. During the First World War as during all the imperialist wars of the 20th century, all those organisations who supported any of the warring camps abandoned the terrain of internationalism, betrayed the working class and were definitively integrated into the camp of the bourgeoisie[7].

These criteria, outlined here very briefly, explain why the ICC sees certain anarchists as comrades in the struggle, why it wants to discuss and cooperate with them while virulently denouncing other anarchist organisations. For example, we have cooperated with the KRAS (the section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers' Association in Russia), by publishing and welcoming its internationalist declarations on war, notably the war in Chechnya. The ICC considers that these anarchists, despite our differences with them, are an authentic part of the proletarian camp. They clearly demarcate themselves from all the anarchists and ‘Communists' (like the Communist parties, the Maoists or Trotskyists) who defend internationalism in theory but oppose it in practice by defending one belligerent against the other in imperialist wars. We should not forget that in 1914, when the First World War broke out, and in 1917, when the Russian revolution took place, the majority of the ‘marxists' of social democracy took the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, whereas the Spanish CNT denounced the imperialist war and supported the revolution. During the revolutionary movements of the day, anarchists and marxists worked sincerely for the proletarian cause, and despite their disagreements found themselves on the same side. There were even efforts to develop an organised and wide scale cooperation between the revolutionary marxists (Bolsheviks in Russia, Spartacists in Germany, Dutch Tribunists, Italian abstentionists etc) who had separated from the degenerating 2nd International, and a number of internationalist anarchist groups. An example of this process is the fact that an organisation like the CNT envisaged the possibility of joining the Third International, although it rejected this in the end[8].

To cite a more recent example, in many parts of the world today there are anarchist groups and sections of the IWA who not only maintain an internationalist position but who also fight for the autonomy of the proletariat against all the ideologies and currents of the bourgeoisie:

- these anarchists call for direct and massive class struggle and self-organisation in general assemblies and workers' councils;

- they reject any participation in the electoral masquerade and any support for political parties who take part in this masquerade, however radical they claim to be.

In other words, they stick to one of the main principles of the First International: "the emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves". Those comrades are part of the struggle for the revolution and a world human community.

The ICC belongs to the same camp as these internationalist anarchists who really defend working class autonomy. Yes, we consider them as comrades with whom we want to debate and cooperate. Yes, we also think that these anarchist militants have more in common with the communist left than with those who, under the label of anarchism, actually defend nationalist and reformist positions and are thus really defenders of capitalism.

In the debate which is slowly developing between all the revolutionary groups and elements on the planet, there will inevitably be mistakes, animated debates, clumsy formulations, misunderstandings and real disagreements. But the needs of the proletarian struggle against a capitalism which is becoming increasingly unbearable and barbaric, the indispensable perspective of the world proletarian revolution, a precondition for the survival of humanity, make this a vital and necessary effort, a duty in fact. And today, when we are seeing the emergence of revolutionary proletarian minorities in many countries, who refer either to marxism or anarchism (or who are open to both), this duty to discuss and cooperate should meet with a determined and enthusiastic response.

Future articles in this series will deal with our difficulties in debating and the way to overcome them. We will also look in more detail at the Anarchist Federation in Britain, which we have mistakenly labelled as a leftist group in the past.

ICC 30/6/10

[1] GSL: Grupo Socialista Libertario (https://webgsl.wordpress.com [129]); PAM: Proyecto Anarquista Metropolitano (proyectoanarquistametropolitano.blogspot.com)

[2] There was a very warm atmosphere throughout this meeting. Read the report on it written on website: ‘Réunion CNT-AIT de Toulouse du 15 avril 2010: vers la constitution d'un creuset de réflexion dans le milieu internationaliste [130]'

[3] See ‘Anarchism and imperialist war', World Revolution numbers 325-328. All available online, beginning here: https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/325/anarchism-war1 [131]

[4] In particular, some comrades were initially uneasy about the joint GSI/PAM/ICC leaflet. We tried to explain our approach in a Spanish article entitled ‘What is our attitude towards comrades who are part of the anarchist tradition?' (https://es.internationalism.org/node/2715 [132])

[5] Some anarchist comrades rightly pointed out certain imprecise formulations and even historical errors in these articles. We will return to this. However, we do want to rectify the most glaring errors here:

- On various occasions, the series ‘Anarchism and imperialist war' asserts that the majority of the anarchist movement fell into nationalism during the First World War while only a handful of individuals risked their lives to defend internationalist positions. The historical elements brought to the discussion by members of the IWA, and confirmed by our own researches, show that in reality a large number of the anarchists opposed the war from 1914 onwards (sometimes in the name of internationalism or anationalism, or under the banner of pacifism)

- The most embarrassing mistake (which up till now no-one has pointed out) concerns the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. We wrote in WR 326 that "When the workers of Barcelona rose up in May 1937, the CNT were complicit in the repression by the Popular Front and the government of Catalonia" - the French version used "anarchists" instead of the CNT, but the ambiguity remains in the English version, since in reality, it was the militants of the CNT or the FAI who made up the majority of the insurgent workers in Barcelona and were the principal victim of the repression organised by the Stalinist hordes. It would have been much more accurate to denounce the collaboration in this massacre of the CNT leadership rather than the "the anarchists". This in any case is the real content of our position on the war in Spain, as defended in particular in the article ‘Lessons of the events in Spain' in no. 36 of the review Bilan (November 1936)

[6] Vignoles is the name of the street where their main HQ is located. ‘AIT' stands for Association Internationale des Travailleurs - in English the International Workers' Association

[7] However, there were groups and elements who were able to break away from organisations which had gone over to the bourgeoisie, for example the Munis group or the group which gave rise to Socialisme ou Barbarie in the Trotskyist Fourth International

[8] See ‘History of the CNT (1914-19): The CNT faced with war and revolution', International Review 129, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/129/CNT-1914-1919 [133]

For many decades two contending gangs of the capitalist class have been busy shedding the blood of the exploited population of Jammu and Kashmir in the name of ‘national unity' on the one hand and ‘liberation' of Kashmir on the other. This has turned this ‘valley of roses' into a valley of death, devastation, poverty and chaos. Hundreds of thousands of people have been violently uprooted and forced to flee Kashmir either through a process of ethnic cleansing against Kashmiri Hindus or a terrorized Muslim population in search of subsistence. The separatists and the Indian state have always tried to negate the very existence of the working class and smother its struggles with the mystification that there is only one struggle in Kashmir, the one that these two bloody gangs are waging.

And yet, the fact is the working class in Kashmir has tried determinedly to assert itself, especially over the last couple of years, and have carried out a number of major strikes and struggles.

Workers try to fight for their class interests

The current cycle of workers struggles in Kashmir can be traced to their combat in 2008. In March 2008, the state government owned JKSRTC (Jammu and Kashmir State Road Transport Corporation) declared that it is making losses as it has too many workers. Government declared its intention to reduce the number of workers and declared a VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme). But there were not many takers of VRS despite coercive tactics. The government declared that it cannot pay years of accumulated COLA [Cost of Living Allowance] and other back wages. In the face of these attacks on their jobs and the bosses' refusal to pay their back wages, workers tried to develop their struggles. Sensing the anger of workers, transport unions tried to sterilize their discontent by channelling it into ritualistic struggle - 2 hours walk out, march to government offices etc. Management and unions were able to put a lid on this discontent by the former making ‘promises' to consider workers demands and the later pretending to ‘trust' these promises.

More than a year later, the threat of redundancy had become more urgent. In the meantime, nothing had come out of management promises.  Workers still hadn't been paid for months. Their back pay accumulated. The economic situation had also worsened with ‘food inflation' remaining above 16%. This provoked another wave of anger and militancy among transport workers. Toward the middle of 2009, there were a number of short strikes and demonstrations by JKSRTC workers. But SRTC workers were not able to unify their agitation and turn it into a wider strike. They were isolated from other sections of state workers. Unions were able to once again weaken workers resolve and dilute their anger through futile and theatrical rituals. For instance, instead of fostering a militant strike, unions asked workers to bring their children to demos with placards: ‘Pay salary to my papa!'. This may seem touching to a sentimental petty bourgeois, but it was not going to have any impact on the bosses and nor did it. Similar other futile agitations were used by unions to weaken workers resolve and arrest the momentum toward a wider strike.

But SRTC workers were not the only ones trying to resist the attacks of the bosses. Although SRTC workers' agitations expressed an effort to fight back, other sections of the state workers have been facing same attacks. All government workers have back pay accumulating from years that the government was not paying. For them, recurring agitations of transport workers acted as an impulse and a rallying point.

Half a million government workers go on strike

Since January 2010 government workers in Jammu and Kashmir had been trying to unify their fight around common demands - payment of back salaries, better wages, and regularisation of temporary and ad hoc state workers. These struggles were joined by ad hoc and temporary workers as well as teachers. Although unions were able to maintain control, it was an expression of the strength of the workers' mobilisation and their determination to fight that even the unions had to call for repeated one or two day strikes in Jan 2010. Four lakh fifty thousand (i.e. 450,000 - Ed) state government workers were involved in these struggles.

Although the unions did everything, they were not really able to stop the momentum toward more militant struggles. This became clear when state government workers again started pushing for strike action. The strike by 450,000 workers began on 3rd April 2010. The workers' demands were still the same - better pay, payment of back salaries - which now amounted to nearly 4300 crores rupees (i.e. 4.3 billion) - and regularisation of ad hoc and temporary workers. From 3rd April public transport was shut down, class rooms of state run schools were locked and all government offices were closed. Even district government offices were shutdown and administration was paralyzed.

Real face of the state exposed                                                          

Faced with this determined strike action by all its workers, the state began to show its real face - the ugly face of repression.

The state at first targeted what it thought the more vulnerable sections of workers. Government warned ad hoc and contractual workers that in case they continued to strike they will lose their right to be regularised. Day-workers will have to face same consequences if they become part of the strike. But threats were not able to break the strike.

Accelerating the repression, on 5th April 2010 Jammu & Kashmir government invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act [ESMA] against striking state workers. The State Finance Minister said the government has been forced by workers to invoke ESMA and that striking workers would face one year imprisonment. Another Minister accused the workers of holding ‘society to ransom'.

But J & K Government is not the first or the only one to invoke this draconian law against striking workers and to use threats and blackmail to break strikes. In the last few months, central government and different state governments have shown equal eagerness to resort to repression against strike actions by different sectors of the working class in different part of the country. They have been equally ruthless in suppressing strike actions. All this goes to show bourgeoisie's fear of the working class and its struggles.

The J & K government did not sit idle after invoking ESMA. It continued to work toward sowing divisions among workers and resorted to further repression of striking workers. Processions and demonstrations were broken up by the police. On 10th April thirteen strikers were arrested. When workers tried to march to the city centre in Srinagar opposing the arrests of their comrades, police tried to break up the march and resorted to a baton charge. This resulted in clashes between strikers and the police. Despite this many workers managed to reach Lal Chowk where more workers were arrested.

Given reputation of Lal Chowk in Srinagar as the site of any number of gun battles between Indian state and separatist gangs, clashes between the police and striking workers there were no doubt exceptional.  This fight back by state workers was like a declaration that amid all the gang wars of different factions of the bourgeoisie, workers have been able to preserve their class identity and are capable of fighting for their class interests.

Unions divide and demobilize the workers

While workers were trying to strengthen their strike and resist repression of the state government, the unions were busy dividing the workers. This they did under the garb of contributing to the strike. There are a number of unions among different sectors of state workers - unions of secretariat staff, JCC, Workers Joint Action Committee [EJAC], transport workers' union etc. While workers were already on strike since several days, each of these unions started to put forward their separate actions plans. Thus working to divide the workers and weakening the momentum of their struggle. JCC declared a further 7 days strike. Another declared another program. Amidst all these divisive efforts and state repression, the workers were able to sustain their strike for 12 days.

At the end of 12 days, one of the unions, EJAC declared it was satisfied with its talk with the Chief Minister and promises by the government. It directed workers to go back to work. Thus after 12 days of strike, workers once again have to make do only with the promises of the bosses and go back to work without any material gain.    

Importance of J & K state workers' strike

The April strike by 450,000 J & K government workers was the largest workers struggle in the state in many years. Situated amidst the global spread of workers militancy, it was a product of accumulation of anger among different sectors of state workers over the years. Its way was paved by repeated short strikes and struggles by Transport workers, bank workers and others sectors.

Confronted by the totalitarian and violent ideologies of the Indian state and the separatists, the strike was a powerful assertion of working class identity and class unity. Despite its major weaknesses, this strike showed a different perspective than the one represented by the bourgeoisie. While all factions of the bourgeoisie in Kashmir represent a perspective of hatred, violent divisions, daily killings, terror and barbarism; the working class at the very minimum was able to show coming together of workers of different religions and regions fighting together, in solidarity, for their common class interests.

The setback that the strike suffered goes to show that next time the J & K state workers take up the fight, they will have to reject both the separatist and repressive unitarian ideologies, as they did this time. In addition they will have to see through the manoeuvres of the unions and realize that unions are not their friends. Instead, workers will have to take their struggle in their own hands and run it themselves. This is the only way to conduct an effective struggle.

But to put an end to a life of poverty, terror, violence and fear, they have to develop their fight into a fight for the destruction of capitalism and its national frameworks and to establish communism, the first truly human community.

 Akbar 10/5/10

The Manchester Class Struggle Forum was created at the beginning of 2010 and has met once a month since February. It was motivated by a group of young people who are active in the internet forums like Libcom and who see the need to deepen an understanding of working class politics by bringing similar minded people together, including several older, experienced militants. The aim is to discuss in the context of assisting a fight back against the current and planned attacks on the working class produced by the deepening economic crisis of world capitalism. The meetings are the forum for a confrontation of positions between different organisations and individuals and between the anarchist/ anarcho-syndicalist and marxist traditions and their different perspectives for political work and intervention.

The first discussion of the Forum was held just prior to the British general election and addressed the question of the relevance of parliamentary elections to the working class. Then we discussed the role of the trade unions to today’s working class in the context of a revival of current labour disputes in Britain (strikes and occupations). The third meeting took up the question of nationalism and internationalism, both in the history of the workers’ movement and with regard to the importance it has for revolutionaries today. Next we attempted to broach the question of how revolutionaries organise themselves, including some reflections on the positions and practices of Lenin and the Bolshevik party. The meeting in July was about anarcho-syndicalism and we discussed around the personal experience of a member of the Solidarity Federation. The last meeting on August 19th looked at the massive growth of strikes and struggles (and the way the Chinese ruling class is dealing with them) that have seen the working class of China at the forefront of the international class struggle in the recent period, this following the opening up the country to foreign investment and ‘free market’ forces since the mid-1990s.

What is important about these meetings is that they are open to anyone who wants to discuss and deepen their understanding of revolutionary politics. In addition they have demonstrated a real proletarian spirit of fraternal debate and respect for the different political viewpoints and positions of the participants. They are attended by people involved in various groups, primarily the Anarchist Federation, SolFed, the Commune group and the ICC, as well as people who are not directly involved with any groups, and there have also been people from various leftist groups, including someone with a profound knowledge of the situation in China, at the last meeting, which proved a good stimulus to the discussion. There is a solid core of regular attenders, amongst them some individuals who are eager and willing to take on the responsibility of doing the presentations and who are prepared to book the room and post the details on the internet (see the Manchester Class struggle Forum blog on Libcom) without which the meetings couldn’t take place. Others attend irregularly and there are some who have only attended once and may not want to return. But it is significant that new faces appear at each meeting. Everyone who attends has been able to contribute by bringing their own knowledge, experience and understanding to the Forum.

We can draw a positive balance sheet of these meetings because they express a commitment to the class struggle and a concern to improve our understanding of the measures and the manoeuvres the ruling class uses against the class’s capacity to defend itself against the attacks. The discussions so far have clearly rejected any illusions in the capitalist state, such as through support for the ‘lesser evil’ in elections or through defence of ‘oppressed’ minority nationalisms in imperialist wars, in the guise of anti-Americanism or anti- any other imperialism. In other words they have adopted a clearly internationalist orientation.

The Forum did have some discussion at one of the meetings about a joint intervention in the class struggle but this wasn’t pursued as the specific strike/dispute that would have been the focus didn’t materialise. We did present an ICC international leaflet that was written around the time of the big strikes in Greece for discussion in the context of organising an intervention in Manchester, but that was at the end of a meeting and there hasn’t been the opportunity to re-discuss a joint intervention since. No doubt it will come up again soon.

Just as the working class as a whole is faced with the difficulty of re-connecting with its traditions of organisation and debate, so the Forum is in its early stages and there are many questions posed about how it can best organise its activities, draw conclusions from its discussions, attract new elements to the meetings and develop a coherent framework for combined activities.

There are immense challenges ahead for the working class today. It is under attack internationally because of capitalism’s need to make it pay for the deepening economic crisis. If workers are going to resist, it is essential for them to unify their struggles across all the divisions that capital imposes on them. It is equally important for revolutionaries to come together across the different proletarian traditions and across the generations to develop clear political perspectives and a common intervention towards the working class. The Manchester Class Struggle Forum is one small step along this road, and it is an example that deserves to be followed elsewhere in the country. Duffy 30.8.10

Faced with appalling living and working conditions, with miserable wages and price rises in basic necessities like rice, thousands of textile workers in Bangladesh have launched massive and very determined struggles. In June there were bloody confrontations with the forces of order. The workers were so angry that they rejected the offer of an 80% pay rise drawn up by the government, the bosses and the unions. The strikes spread spontaneously to factories at the edge of the capital Dhaka and to other parts of the country, especially in response to state repression. The workers’ indignation with their situation also expressed itself in the destruction of machinery, seen as symbols of their enslavement. But they also set up barricades, blocked motorways and invaded the centre of the city, in order to make their voices heard and defend themselves collectively.

Exploitation and class struggle in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has seen more and more wildcat strikes, often violently put down by the state, especially since the explosion of unrest in 2006. The country employs 3.5.million workers in the textile and garment industry. 80% of this production is exported by the big international corporations. These western merchants of ‘designer goods’ are full of noble speeches about demanding decent wages for their workers and banning child labour, but they exert a huge pressure on local employers to keep the price of labour power as low as possible. This is perhaps one of the cheapest labour forces in the world. And in a world context of overproduction and crisis, even wages of 19 euros a month seem rather high to the capitalists!

The textile workers, who have often just come from the countryside, cannot survive on such poverty wages. They live in the slums of Dhaka that are often exposed to floods. Their living conditions are in many ways worse than those experienced in the early days of the industrial revolution. The majority of the workforce is made up of women who work over 10 hours a day, many of them through the night, at a frenzied pace in conditions of searing heat. They are victims of all kinds of brutality from the bosses and foremen, including physical threats and sexual abuse. One worker in five is less than 15 years old. The archaic infrastructure and lack of safety regulations mean that accidents are extremely frequent. In 2009 hundreds of workers died in two factory fires.

Now that the poorer countries are witnessing such violent and visible explosions of anger, the bourgeoisie is becoming aware that repression alone is not enough and it is trying to complement the police with more suitable organs of social control – trade unions. In Bangladesh, the main unions have very little grip over the workers. This is why unofficial unions are taking up the slack, presenting themselves as a real opposition and criticising the lack of trade union rights. As a trade unionist in Bangladesh put it: “Because legal recourse is virtually impossible, spontaneous demonstrations are often the solution” (www.lemonde.fr [142]). With the same concern, the local trade union, the BGWUC, aware of the need to keep things in the proper framework, emphasises that “minimising repression can give the union leaders the chance to intervene quickly in the workplace to prevent nascent conflicts from degenerating into the usual violence” (www.dndf.org [143]).

In other words, the trade unions are insisting that before resorting to the truncheon, the bosses should call on their services to stifle the class struggle. This is why western trade unionists have been travelling to Bangladesh recently. Members of the UK union Unite and the American United Steel Workers have been over there helping local trade unions. It was the same in 1980 when British, French and other trade unionists went over to Poland to help build the Solidarnosc trade union and support its efforts to corral the mass strike.

The common struggle of the working class

Against the various weapons of the enemy class, the proletariat has to be vigilant. The wildcat strikes and militant street demonstrations in Bangladesh are part of a huge international movement which began in 2003 with the public sector strikes in France. Since then, this dynamic of resistance has grown, especially in the poorer regions, as we have seen in countries like Algeria, Turkey and China.

For years the workers in the peripheral countries have been presented as being in competition with workers in the more developed regions. But now they are showing themselves to be our class brothers and sisters; victims like we are of the economic crisis of capitalism. This is why the bourgeoisie prefers to impose a black-out on their struggles while spreading the same old lies. It needs above all to hide all signs of a growing solidarity between the workers.

In this process of international struggle, the workers of the advanced countries have a particular role in extending the movement and, given their historical experience, in providing it with the perspective of revolution. WH 24.810 

In July, during a visit to India no less, David Cameron, British Prime Minister, no doubt delivering a message from his earlier meeting with the US administration, accused Pakistan, or elements within Pakistan, of exporting terror and playing a double game. He should know. The export of terrorism and the double games that surround it are a speciality of British imperialism – as Pakistan well knows.

The Guardian newspaper, as a national newspaper, is one of the elements of the British state, but some of its reporting on Iraq and Afghanistan has been extremely informative about the double-dealing going on. Reporters Simon Tisdall and Haroon Siddique and columnist Mark Curtis, author of the book Secret Affairs, Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, have recently provided some strong evidence that Britain, too, is ‘facing both ways’.

First of all, on the AfPak border, Tisdall quoting from Stephen Tanner’s Afghanistan, A Military History: “This arbitrary line (the Pakistan/Afghanistan border), drawn through the mountains in 1893 by the bird-watching Englishman (Henry) Mortimer Duran, was meant at the time to split the Pashtun people, the world’s largest remaining tribal society”. Tisdall goes on to say: “London also wanted to keep Peshawar, Quetta and the strategic Khyber Pass in the territory of the Raj. It succeeded in both aims – but the partition of ‘Pashtunistan’, heartland of the Taliban, is now a major complicating factor in the security situation. This problem was made in Britain”.” Made in Britain”, like so many of the continual running sores and flashpoints of imperialism today that have their roots in British double-dealing and the policy of divide and rule: Iraq, Palestine, the Balkans, Africa, etc.

Mark Curtis (The Guardian, 6.7.10) shows that British involvement with and manipulation of militant Islamist groups goes back decades and that Whitehall’s collusion with “terrorist” Islamist groups is continuing. He shows how two of the London 7/7 bombers were trained in camps in Pakistan run by the Harkat ul-Mujahideen (HUM) group that received at least indirect aid from Britain. MI6’s covert operations in the AfPak region in the 80s, involved, along with the CIA and government of Benazir Bhutto, the aiding, financing and training of various Islamist and Talib groups to fight against the Russian occupation. One of these faction’s warlords was “Jalalludin Haqqani, who is now the Taliban’s overall military commander fighting the British: his past is not something that the Ministry of Defence relates to the young soldiers deployed to Helmand province.” Curtis also talks about the warlord/killer Hulbuddin Hekmatyar, now on the ‘other’ side, who met Foreign Office officials in Whitehall. Noises from the F.O. suggest that Britain will, once again, have to deal with these men to extricate themselves from the mess they are in. Curtis quotes the head of the British army, Sir David Richards, saying that the “UK’s authority and reputation (!) in the world” are at stake. Since 2004, Britain has been holding talks with elements of the Taliban and this should come as no surprise given Britain’s historical entanglement with Islamic fundamentalism. Curtis again: “The Anglo-American operation in Iran in 1953 to remove the popular Mossadeq government, which had nationalised British oil operations, involved plotting with Ayatollah Seyyed Kashani, the founder of the militant fundamentalist group Devotees of Islam. Both MI6 and the CIA were involved in this plotting and scheming. “Also targeted was Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, who in 1952 overthrew the pro-British King Farouk, providing an Arab nationalist alternative to the pro-western monarchies in the Middle East. Britain had first covertly funded the Muslim Brotherhood, a new radical force with a terrorist wing, in 1942, and further links were made with the organisation after Nasser’s revolution. By 1956, when Britain invaded Egypt, contacts were developed as part of the plans to overthrow Nasser. Indeed, the invasion was undertaken in the knowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood might form the new regime. After Nasser died in 1970, the pro-western president Anwar Sadat secretly sponsored militant Islamist cells to counter nationalists and communists (mainly Russian influence, but workers would have been directly attacked). British officials were still describing the Brotherhood as a ‘potentially handy weapon’”.

Britain certainly contributed to the rise of global terrorism even if local conditions were favourable to it: support for the anti-Russian “holy warriors” in the 1980s which resulted in Al Qaida, support for Algerian fundamentalist killers, giving them, among many others, safe haven in London, where, along with elements of the British state they plotted and schemed. “But Whitehall’s view of Islamic militants as handy weapons or shock troops is far from historical. In 1999, during Nato’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the Blair government secretly trained fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army to act as Nato’s soldiers on the ground (also importing fundamentalists from the AfPak region). The KLA was openly described by ministers as a terrorist organisation”. The SAS was involved in training them and “... one KLA unit was led by the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s right-hand man. This murky feature of Blair’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ remains overlooked in most accounts of the war”.

British imperialism’s involvement with radical Islam continued into the aftermath of the war in Iraq relatively recently, with British army commanders sucking up to the fundamentalist groups in Basra, effectively handing over security, i.e., its own brand of terror and oppression, to the Shia fundamentalists.

Britain, as a major power, is by no means alone in using, sheltering, aiding and manipulating fundamentalist terrorist groups and warlords. Imperialism abounds globally, nationally and locally and there is no escape from it or its decomposing spread of warfare and militarism. Around the Union Jacks, nationalism and processions of returning soldiers coffins or young men who have been blown apart, yet still live, and those many more that have been brutalised and traumatised, we will hear nothing of all these dirty dealings of the British state. Instead, the Goebbels’-type Big Lie is repeated again and again: we are in Afghanistan to provide security to the local population and keep the streets of Britain safe. Military, Labour and Conservative liars covered in blood. Baboon. 12.8.10

The San José mine in the Atacama Desert where 33 miners have been trapped since an explosion in the Chilean mine on 5 August has seen dozens of previous accidents. In 2007 it was actually closed down because of health and safety considerations. When it was reopened there was supposed to be a ladder from the emergency shelter to the surface – this was never finished.

When it was discovered that the miners were still alive there were jubilant scenes on Chilean streets. But the media frenzy that followed obscures the reality: across the world the conditions of miners are of no concern to their employers, whether in state enterprises or private mining companies. In China, in particular, where it is estimated that 80% of the world’s mining accidents occur, death and injuries from explosions, floods and other accidents are widespread.

Official figures for deaths in Chinese mining accidents run from 2009’s 2631 to 2002’s 6995. Serious analysts of the industry suggest that a typical annual figure of 20,000 deaths is probably more accurate, and this is without estimates of injuries or lung afflictions. One guess for the number of Chinese miners suffering from pneumoconiosis gives a figure of 600,000.

Productivity in the Chinese coal mining industry is very low. That is to say, it is very labour intensive: this accounts for the 5 million workers employed in it. The accident rates per 100 tons of coal are 100 times greater in China than the US, 30 times greater than in South Africa.

While the world’s media turns its attention to the prospects of the Chilean miners it’s worth remembering that, looking world-wide across all industries in a typical year, and only taking the official statistics, more than 2 million workers are fatally injured as the result of a work-related accident – the equivalent of 6000 a day. People make jokes about the absurdities of the health and safety industry, but the fact that capitalist exploitation kills on such a scale is deadly serious.   Car 4/9/10

Bloomberg (4/8/10) report that workers in Guangdong province may soon have the ‘right to strike.’

The problem for Chinese capitalism is that, regardless of their ‘rights’, workers have already been launching determined waves of struggle against the ruthless exploitation of the bosses and their state. In the past the Chinese state has very often relied on repression to deal with workers’ struggles, now it seems to be adopting the methods of democratic capitalism to undermine workers’ efforts to defend their interests.

The Guangdong experiment is no advance for workers. The legal framework will be a fetter on workers’ energies. As with workers elsewhere, workers in China need to hold mass meetings to discuss the needs of their collective struggle, to elect delegates who can be recalled at any time, to discuss the best means to spread the struggle to other workers. What the capitalists fear is when workers begin to express their solidarity outside the union framework.   Ishish 4/9/10

In South Africa, the patriotic euphoria created by the World Cup is already over. Like every other country in the world, South Africa is ruled by capitalism, and capitalism is a system in crisis which can only survive by stepping up the exploitation of the majority. A bitter strike by 1.3million public sector workers, led by teachers and nurses, has broken out around wage demands. The nurses have attempted to maintain essential services in the hospitals but have been condemned by the media for abandoning the sick and vulnerable. But the struggle has a lot of support within the working class. The strike has been joined by car workers, fuel supply workers, and, briefly, miners, with growing unrest among soldiers being used as strikebreakers.

In nearby Mozambique, a 30% rise in the price of bread has sparked strikes and riots in the streets of the capital Maputo as well as Matola, a neighbouring city to Maputo, and in Beira and Chimoio, urban centres in the central part of the country. Police have responded brutally, with live ammunition as well as rubber bullets. At least 10 people were shot dead and hundreds have been wounded. There have also been clashes over food price rises in Egypt. Prices of basic food stuffs around the world are steadily rising, particularly as a result of droughts and floods – probable effects of climate change - which have devastated agriculture in countries like Russia and Pakistan. The media are already voicing fears that the Mozambique rebellion could herald an international wave of food riots, as we saw in 2008. Across the planet, millions are already faced with starvation and capitalism’s economic and ecological breakdown is making the situation dramatically worse.

South African workers mocked the World Cup’s official feelgood slogan ‘Feel it, it is here’, with their own version: ‘feel it, it is war’. And the class war is international. Workers in countries like China and Bangladesh, whose cheap labour has kept up profits for the big western companies, are refusing to lie down in front of the capitalist crisis any longer. There have been huge waves of strikes in China and Bangladesh, many of them outside the control of the established unions, which the workers see as corrupt and subservient to capital and the state. The ruling class has responded with brutal repression, but also by trying to cobble together more ‘representative’ trade unions which can do a better job of keeping the workers in line. We are seeing similar tactics in South Africa, where the Congress of South African Trade Unions is threatening to break its ties with the ruling ANC so it can present itself to discontented workers as a really ‘independent’ force.

First of all because they have shown that massive and determined struggle is the only answer that the exploited have against the criminal attacks that our exploiters want to impose. In this case a 5% cut in wages. An anti-working class attack that is completely illegal even from the point of view of bourgeois legality, since it is a unilateral violation of the Collective Agreement signed by the authorities. Yet they still dare to call the Metro workers “criminals”!

Solidarity also faced with the campaign of lies aiming at the “social lynching” of these comrades. The right wing politicians and media have carried out a rancid campaign which tries to present the strikes as the pawns in a campaign by the Socialist Party against the “leader” of the PP (Esperanza Aguirre), and made the most rabid calls for sanctions and sackings. However, we should not forget the left’s energetic collaboration with this campaign aimed at isolating and disparaging the workers. Aguirre or Rajoy called for a firm hand against these “vandals”, the minister for development carried out a massive mobilisation of other means of transport in order to break the strike and the interior minister placed nearly 4500 police at Aguirre’s disposal! Whilst the ‘left’ media was less odious it was more hypocritical, reinforcing the idea of “a strike with hostages” as El Pais headlined on the 30th June. These “Red” lackeys of the capitalist system know which side to choose between Aguirre and striking workers.

What they have been most indignant about has not been the problems faced by passengers. It is enough to see the conditions they have to endure on ‘normal’ days and the growing chaos caused by the increasing deterioration of public transport. Nor are they particularly irritated by the loses incurred as a result of delays or employee absences. It takes some nerve to accuse the striking Madrid Metro workers of violating the “right to work” when Spanish capital has deprived nearly 5 million workers of this “right”!

No, what really worries and preoccupies them about the struggle of the Madrid Metro workers is that they have refused to accept the sacrifices and attacks that have rained down on them from all sides, that they have tried to push back these attacks. These workers have not be willing to accept sterile parades like the civil servants’ strike on the 8th June, but instead have given an example of unity and determination. As the aforementioned editorial of El Pais recognised “The works committee claims that there is an Agreement in place until 2012 and that the Madrid Municipality has unilaterally broken it. But this was the case for the Civil Servants (‘and they were satisfied with the pantomime of the 8th June’ is the paper’s subliminal message). It is possible that it is necessary to have a more pedagogic explanation of the seriousness of the situation which demands such sacrifices in exchange for job security (and they have the gall to brand the strikers as blackmailers!) and a greater clarity in order to explain how to square a 5% pay reduction with a later guarantee to maintain purchasing power...”

As an expression of the response of the working class, the struggle of the comrades of the Madrid metro is full of vital lessons for all workers. Today the struggle has entered a kind of lull and it is difficult to know how it will develop, so it is too soon to make an exhaustive balance sheet of all of these lessons. Here we will take up the most striking ones.

Assemblies: the head and heart of workers’ struggle

One of the characteristics of the struggle of the comrades of the Madrid metro has been the holding of truly mass assemblies. On the 29th June when the assembly decided not to accept the minimum service, most people could not get into the room; on the 30th, despite the campaign of lies about the struggle, even more took part than the day before. Why? As the metro workers said themselves “In order to show that we are united as one”.

During these assemblies there was an effort to avoid the habitual tricks of the unions. For example, dispersal and confusion around the calling of the strike. Thus the assembly of the 30th June agreed to implement the minimum service on the 1st and 2nd July in order to avoid the struggle being squeezed between the union which was for a total strike and those that were not. This assembly also drew back from the radical verbiage of the former spokesman for the committee, whose declaration “We are going to shut down Madrid” served the interests of the enemies of the struggle in their campaign of disinformation aimed at isolating the metro workers.

The assemblies not only served to temper this phony radicalism and avoid being dragged into provocations. Above all they acted to encourage the workers, to support their determination and militancy. Thus, for example, instead of the usual secret ballots and individual union votes, the metro strike was decided upon and organised by raised hands, which allowed the determination of some comrades to help stimulate those who were more undecided. Of course the media wanted to raise the ghost of some metro workers being ‘pressurised’ by the pickets, but what has really animated the workers to take part in the stoppage is the fact that it is the result of a conscious decision taken after open and frank discussion, where it was possible to express fears as well as give reasons for the struggle. On one of the websites that served to express the solidarity with this strike (www.usuariossolidarious.wordpress.com [146]) a young Metro worker said frankly that he had attended the assembly of 29th June “in order to lose his fear of the struggle”.

The trap of the “minimum service”

In the case of the metro strike, the decree on minimum service has served as the basis for battering the strikers and trying to intimidate them in order to undermine the struggle.

As much as Ms Esperanza Aguirre would like to presented herself as a damsel in distress in the evil clutches of ruthless strikers, the truth is that the decree allows the authorities (the bosses for public sector workers) to set the minimum service. Knowing from experience the margin of maneuver provided by this law and, above all, having the support of Sexta, President of the Madrid local authority, she made a really provocative move by dictating that 50% of the workforce maintain a minimum service.

This trap placed the workers between a rock and a hard place. If they accepted it they would break their hard won commitment not to bend to management dictates. If they didn’t provide a service they would give a gift to their adversaries who would blame them for the suffering of their class comrades who are the main users of the metro... Furthermore this strike law, which according to all the defenders of bourgeois order needs “to be toughened”, allowed the employer, which in this case we have to insist is the government, to impose sanctions against those who do not provide a minimum service, giving it another bargaining tool. Two days after the metro workers agreed to put in place a minimum service, management increased the number of those sanctioned from 900 to 2800 comrades.

The only way to escape this trap is by seeking the solidarity of the rest of the working class.

Class solidarity is the foundation for the growth of workers’ militancy and strength

The strength of workers’ struggles does not reside in their capacity to causes losses for capitalist firms. As the Madrid metro experience has shown, the managers of these firms are more than capable of doing that. Neither does it lie in their ability to paralyse a city or a sector. There again it’s difficult to outdo the bourgeois state on that score.

The strength of the workers’ struggles is fundamentally that they put forwards, more or less explicitly, a universally valid principle for all of the exploited: that human needs should not be sacrificed on the altar of the law of profit and capitalist competition.

No matter how radical the confrontation between this or that sector of workers and their bosses may be, if the bourgeoisie can present it as something specific or particular, it will be able to defeat it and inflict a demoralising blow against the whole working class. On the other hand, if workers can win the solidarity of other workers, if they can convince them that their demands are not a threat to the other exploited, but an expression of the same class interests, if they can form their assemblies and hold demonstrations in order to draw in other workers, they will be able to strengthen themselves and the whole of the working class.

For the struggle of the comrades of the Madrid Metro, what was important was not to dedicate pickets to stopping the movement of trains – though of course the assemblies had to ensure its decisions were carried out – but to explain to their comrades working for the EMT or Telemadrid, or the other public sector workers, the cause of the struggle. Moreover, the future of the struggle will not be determined by this or that percentage of a minimum service, although the majority of workers will have to be freed up in order to be able to attend the assemblies, man the pickets, attend demonstrations etc; the most important thing will be to gain the confidence and solidarity of other sectors of workers, to go to the workers’ neighborhoods to explain their demands in order to show that the Madrid metro workers are not privileged nor a threat to other workers, but are responding to the attacks caused by capitalism’s crisis.

These attacks are going to affect the working class internationally, whatever their conditions or jobs. If the bourgeoisie are able to play off one group of workers against another, or to keep struggles isolated, even if they are radical but trapped in their own corner, they will be able to impose the needs of their system of exploitation. If, on the other hand, workers’ struggles begin to spread and unite against these criminal attacks we will be able to impede the imposition of new and more brutal sacrifices. This will be an important step in the development of a proletarian alternative to capitalist poverty and barbarism. Accion Proletaria, 12th July 2010.

Letter of solidarity from a group of Madrid postal workers

Hello comrades:

The writers of this text are from district 43 of the Madrid Post Office. As postal workers we are in the streets daily; as workers we live several kilometers from our place of work as do others (a relocation imposed precisely by our employers). As public sector workers we are paying for the feast that the government invited the bankers to, we are being privatised, packaged up and contracted out, and like you we are no longer civil servants. We just want to give you our full support. We want to tell you that we are taking the long displacement bus journeys with smiles on our faces, because you have shown us WHAT CAN BE DONE, that we do not have to be indefinitely fucked over by this world, that we can have a little of the dignity that has been lost for some time.

We want you to know that daily we talk with hundreds of people through our job, we know that reality is not what the media shows us, there is anger and excitement, that there are discussions on buses, in squares and bars…

We are with you because you give us hope. In our district whilst we are working we hear comments: “We are the ones who have to pay” and “This strike has balls”, there are those who say that “this is a real strike and not another dead-end one day strike”.

We are being given lessons. Lessons such as when a strike is called by a show of hands by workers they are not lost before they start. We are very tired of our unions, we are sick and tired of the thousand and one times that we have been sold out.

Therefore we end this letter by telling you that our hearts have been beating quicker since Monday, that we are with you in the defense of your strike.

Don’t be cowed, we already know that Aguirre or Zapatero, the COPE1 or Prisa have different interests than ours. That they are used to being against us. They know that thousands of workers are watching you because you are the FUTURE, and not the dull future offered by them.

If you need us you know we are here, in the meantime we will continue to defend you against anyone who dares to denigrate you.

Post men and women of District 43,

1 July 2010

1. COPE is a right wing radio station and Prisa is a left wing media enterprise.

On the 17th August the Unite union representing airport workers reached an agreement with the British airport operator, BAA, for a measly 2% increase on basic pay and allowances with the added guaranteed lump sum of £500. Let’s be clear what this manoeuvre means: the same union, UNITE, which ‘represents’ both airport workers and cabin crew staff who have been engaged in a year long running dispute have delivered … for the bosses of BAA and British Airways.

The proliferation of these phenomena and their growing seriousness is not an accident or a tragic inevitability against which nothing can be done and for which no one is to blame. Capitalism and its laws bear a heavy responsibility in the gestation of these disasters.

Capitalism is destroying the planet

According to numerous scientists global warming plays an important part in the multiplication of extreme climatic phenomena such as torrential rain and hurricanes. In the words of Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele, Vice President of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “These are events that are known to recur and intensify in an environment disturbed by pollution from greenhouse gas emissions”. From 1997 to 2006, with the temperature of the planet continuing to increase, the number of more and more intense catastrophes grew by 60% compared to the previous decade. As a symbol of this global warming, at the beginning of August 2010 a gigantic iceberg of 250 km2 broke off into the Arctic Ocean, reducing the extent of the ice cap for the fourth consecutive year so that it is now less than 4 million km2. This summer many temperature records have been broken, like the staggering 53.5° on 26 May in Pakistan. “The mean temperature of the planet is growing, according to the records and analyses of James Hansen’s team at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA), as the first six months of 2010 establish a record as the hottest in 130 years” (Libération, 12/8/10).

Scientists from oil companies, some politicians and TV pundits resist the idea that global warming is the result of a massive pollution of the atmosphere, but all serious scientific research shows a clear correlation between greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and the proliferation of natural disasters. However, scientists are mistaken when they say that a little political will from governments is the way to change things. Capitalism is incapable of limiting greenhouse gas emissions because that means going against the very basis of its mode of production: the pursuit of profit with its consequent competition and imperative to cut costs. It’s because of these laws that the bourgeoisie pollutes, with, among many examples, its heavy industry and the transport of commodities over thousands of kilometres.

The responsibility of capitalism in the spread of these catastrophes is not limited to atmospheric pollution and climate change. The methodical destruction of ecosystems through, for example, massive deforestation, waste disposal in areas of natural drainage, or urban sprawl - sometimes onto the beds of drained rivers or at the heart of particularly inflammable areas - forcefully aggravates the intensity of disasters.

In Pakistan millions of victims of imperialist conflicts

Since July torrential rain has battered Pakistan causing major flooding, landslides, thousands dead or injured, 20 million people affected, 11,000 schools damaged, 1.2 millions houses damaged, 3.6m hectares of crops destroyed, 1.2m livestock lost, 6m poultry lost and much other material damage. A fifth of the country is submerged in the worst floods in the region since the late 1920s. Officially, the number of people living below the poverty line has risen from 33% of the population prior to the floods to 40% now.

Famine and the spread of disease, particularly cholera, have worsened an already desperate situation. For more than a month, in the middle of this horrible tableau, the Pakistani bourgeoisie and its army have displayed a mind-blowing cynicism and incompetence, blaming the remorselessness of nature, when between unplanned urbanisation and impotent emergency services, the laws of capitalism appear as the essential element in understanding the magnitude of the disaster.

But a particularly nauseating aspect of this tragedy is the way in which the big imperialist powers try to benefit from the situation using the humanitarian operations as an alibi, to the detriment of the victims. The US supported the fragile government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and very rapidly profited from the events in deploying a significant military contingent, including helicopter carriers and amphibious assault vehicles. In the name of the war against terrorism the US has spread its net over Pakistan and checks all arrivals of ‘international aid’ coming from other countries. ‘Humanitarian aid’ is made up of soldiers, diplomats and unscrupulous investors.

As with every disaster of such a magnitude, all the resources that are sent by each country are made to serve their imperialist interests. This includes the promise of aid, which has become a systematic con trick. Each government officially announces substantial financial help, which is officiously granted according to the interests and ambitions of the donors. Take the example of Haiti where only 10 % of the international aid promised in January 2010 has actually been given to the Haitian bourgeoisie so far. Pakistan is not going to be an exception to this rule. $800m has been promised, but what will be handed over to the state will be for services rendered by the Pakistani bourgeoisie.

Fires in Russia show the contradictions of capitalism

From late July hundreds of fires raged throughout a large area around Moscow, burning hundreds of hectares of forest, peat bogs and agricultural and urban areas. The fires have killed dozens of people and left thousands homeless. For several days a thick cloud hung over the capital with devastating effects on health, to the extent that the usual mortality rate doubled. And, for good measure, significant nuclear and chemical risks threaten people beyond the Russian borders, in particular with fires on the land contaminated by the Chernobyl explosion, but also with nuclear sites and more or less forgotten stocks of arms and chemical products menaced by fire. Curiously enough this has not attracted much media attention.

These fires show the negligence of the bourgeoisie and the decay of capitalist society. One of the most striking aspects of these events was the incapacity of the Russian state to get the fires under control. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin can play the superhero in front of the TV cameras, piloting a fire-fighting plane, but this disaster is the result of several decades of typical bourgeois policies, cynical and blinded by profit.

An essential element in understanding the role of the bourgeoisie in the extent of the wildfires is the staggering neglect of the forests. Russia is an enormous country endowed with very significant and dense forestry, requiring particular care to promptly contain fires in their early stages and prevent them spreading and getting out of control. A lot of massive Russian forests don’t have access routes, so the fire service is incapable of getting to the heart of many fires. Russia has only 22,000 fire-fighters, less than many much smaller countries. Many particularly corrupt regional governments prefer to use limited resources intended to manage forests to buy luxury cars, as several scandals have revealed.

The same cynicism is shown with the impact of wildfire on peat bogs, areas where the soil is made of particularly inflammable decomposing organic matter. In abandoning the peat bogs the Russian bourgeoisie has favoured the construction of housing in those areas where fires were particularly rife in 1972. In these dangerous areas property speculators have been able to buy land – declared building land by law – at derisory prices. It is in such ways that capitalism transforms natural phenomena, controllable by humanity, into veritable disasters. Incidentally, the Russian authorities have been reduced to waiting for the winter freeze to put out the fires in the peat fields.

It is also, at this point, worth recalling the damage across the Gulf of Mexico from the oil slick caused by the explosion on the BP oil rig. The recklessness of capitalism in its search for materials that it can profitably sell has never known any limitations. To this it can be added that China, in addition to recent floods and landslides in several provinces, has also suffered its worst ever oil spill after a fire at an oil depot caused crude oil to leak into the sea for several days in the area around the important northern port of Dalian. Far from employing the latest cutting-edge technology there were poignant pictures of people on beaches trying to clean them up using only chopsticks and plastic bags. Elsewhere “Fishermen covered in oil, some of them working just in their underwear, scrape up the toxic sludge that spilled out of the jars they have brought back from the open sea. No one is wearing protective goggles, facemasks or even gloves to protect them from the hazardous chemicals in the oil.” (BBC 30/7/10).

Capitalism and its state are directly responsible for the multiplication and the deadly extent of the climatic catastrophes. The working class must not have any illusions in the capacity of the ruling class to protect humanity against devastating natural phenomena, no illusions in replacing the existing government cliques with more ‘green’ leaders and no hope for ecological reforms that will save the planet and humanity from environmental chaos. The basis of capitalism, with its drive for profit, competition and exploitation is at the heart of the problem at every level. We must destroy it.   V 31/8/10

In the first part of this new series of articles [148], we tried to show that there are fundamental points of agreement between the internationalist anarchists and the communist left. For the ICC, without denying that important differences exist, the crucial thing is that we are all determined defenders of workers’ autonomy, since we refuse to give our support “even in a ‘critical’ or ‘tactical’ way, or in the name of the ‘lesser evil’, to a sector of the bourgeoisie - whether the ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie against the ‘fascist’ bourgeoisie, or the left against the right, or the Palestinian bourgeoisie against the Israeli bourgeoisie, etc. Such an approach has two concrete implications:

1. Rejecting any electoral support or cooperation with parties which manage the capitalist system or defend this or that form of this system (social democracy, Stalinism, ‘Chavismo’, etc)

2. Above all, during any war, it means maintaining an intransigent internationalism, refusing to choose between this or that imperialist camp.” (‘The Communist Left and Internationalist Anarchism’, Part one, WR 336)

All those who defend these essential positions in theory and practice need to be aware that they belong to the same camp: the camp of the working class and the revolution

Inside this camp, there are necessarily differences of opinion and position between individuals, groups and tendencies. It is by debating on an international scale, openly, fraternally, but also firmly, without making any false concessions, that revolutionaries can best participate in the general development of proletarian consciousness. But in order to do this, they have to try to understand the origin of the difficulties which still stand in the way of such a debate.

These difficulties are the product of history. The revolutionary wave which began in 1917 in Russia and 1918 in Germany put an end to the First World War but it was defeated by the bourgeoisie. A terrible counter-revolution descended on the working class in all countries, the most monstrous expressions being Stalinism and Nazism – precisely in the two countries where the proletariat had been in the forefront of the revolutionary tide.

For the anarchists, the establishment, by a party which claimed to be marxist, of a terrifying police dictatorship in the country of the October revolution was seen as a confirmation of the criticisms it had always made of marxist ideas, reproaching them for their ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘centralism’, for not calling for the immediate abolition of all forms of the state the day after the revolution, for not making the principle of Liberty their number one value. At the end of the 19th century, the triumph of reformism and of ‘parliamentary cretinism’ within the Socialist parties had already been seen by the anarchists as confirmation of the validity of their refusal to take any part in elections[1]. It was very similar following the triumph of Stalinism. For them, this regime was just the logical consequence of the ‘congenital authoritarianism’ of marxism. In particular, they saw a continuity between the policies of Lenin and those of Stalin, since, after all, political terror had already developed when Lenin was still alive, and indeed not long after the revolution.

Obviously, one of the arguments given to prove this ‘continuity’ is the fact that, as early as spring 1918, certain anarchist groups in Russia were repressed and their newspapers shut down. But the ‘decisive’ argument was the bloody crushing of the Kronstadt uprising in March 1921 by the Bolshevik power headed by Lenin and Trotsky. The Kronstadt episode was obviously very significant because the workers and sailors of this naval base had been in the vanguard of the October 1917 insurrection which overthrew the bourgeois government and allowed the soviets (the workers’ and soldiers’ councils) to take power. And it was precisely this most advanced sector of the revolution which had rebelled in 1921, raising the slogan ‘power to the soviets, not the parties’.

The communist left and the Russian experience

Inside the communist left, there is full agreement among its different tendencies on these obviously essential points:

-         recognition of the bourgeois, counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism;

-         rejection of any ‘defence of the workers’ bastion’, the USSR, and in particular the rejection of any participation in the Second World War in the name of defending the USSR or on any other pretext;

-         the characterisation of the economic and social system in the USSR as a particular form of capitalism, state capitalism in its most extreme form.

On these three decisive points, the communist left is thus in agreement with the internationalist anarchists but is totally opposed to the Trotskyists who considered the Stalinist state to be a ‘degenerated workers’ state’, the Communist Parties to be ‘workers’ parties’ and who, in their great majority, enlisted in the Second World War (mainly in the ranks of the Resistance)

On the other hand, within the communist left, there are notable differences in understanding the process which led from the 1917 revolution to Stalinism.

Thus, the Dutch left current (the ‘council communists’ or ‘councilists’) consider that the October revolution was a bourgeois revolution whose function was to replace the feudal Czarist regime with a bourgeois state more capable of developing a modern capitalist economy. The Bolshevik party, which was at the head of this revolution, is itself seen as a bourgeois party of a particular type, charged with establishing a kind of state capitalism, even if its militants and leaders were not really conscious of this. Thus, for the ‘councilists’ there is indeed a continuity between Lenin and Stalin, the latter being, in some way, the ‘executive heir’ of the former. In this sense there is a certain convergence between the anarchists and the councilists, although the latter did not give up their reference to marxism.

The other main tendency of the communist left, the one which descends from the Italian left, considered that the October revolution and the Bolshevik party were proletarian in nature[2]. The framework that this tendency puts forward for understanding the victory of Stalinism is the isolation of the revolution in Russia – the result of the defeat of the revolutionary struggles in other countries, above all Germany. Even before the October revolution, the whole workers’ movement, and the anarchists were no exception, thought that if the revolution didn’t extend onto the world scale, it would be defeated. But the fundamental historical element which illustrated the tragic destiny of the Russian revolution was that this defeat didn’t come from the ‘outside’ (the White armies, supported by the world bourgeoisie, had been beaten) but from the ‘inside’, through the working class losing power, above all losing all control over the state which had arisen in the wake of the revolution, as well as through the degeneration and betrayal of the party which had led the revolution, through its integration into this state.

Having said this, the different groups who claim descent from the Italian left don’t all share the same analyses on the policies of the Bolsheviks during the early years of the revolution. For the ‘Bordigists’, the monopoly of power by a political party, the establishment of a form of monolithism in the party, the use of terror and even the bloody suppression of the Kronstadt revolt are not to be criticised. On the contrary, they still fully endorse such policies; and given that internationally the Italian left current has largely been known about through the ‘Bordigists’, this has served to repel a lot of anarchists from the communist left.

But the Italian left current cannot be reduced to Bordigism. The Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy (which later became the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left) undertook a whole work of drawing up a balance sheet of the Russian experience (the name of its French review was Bilan or Balance Sheet). Between 1945 and 1952, the Gauche Communiste de France (which published Internationalisme) carried on this work and the current which was to form the ICC in 1975 had already taken up its torch in Venezuela in 1964 and France in 1968.

This current (and also a current within the Partito Comunista Internazionalista in Italy) considered it vital to criticise certain aspects of Bolshevik policy from the very beginning of the revolution. In particular, many of the elements which the anarchists denounce, the taking of power by a party, the terror, and in particular the repression of Kronstadt, are seen by our organisation (following on from Bilan and the GCF) as errors, even crimes committed by the Bolsheviks which can perfectly well be criticised from a marxist standpoint, and even from the standpoint of Lenin, notably his State and Revolution written in 1917. These errors can be explained in various ways which we can’t go into here, but which are part of the general debate between the communist left and the internationalist anarchists. Let’s just say here that the essential reason is the fact that the Russian revolution was the first (and to this day the only) historical experience of a proletarian revolution which was momentarily victorious. But it is up to revolutionaries to draw the lessons of this experience as Bilan sought to do in the 1930s. For Bilan “a deep understanding of the causes of the defeat” was a fundamental requirement. “And this understanding cannot permit any taboo or ostracism. Drawing the balance sheet of the post war events is thus the way to lay the bases for the victory of the proletariat in all countries” (Bilan no. 1, November 1933)

The anarchists and the communist left

Periods of counter-revolution are not at all favourable to unity or even cooperation between revolutionary forces. The disarray and dispersion which affects the working class as a whole also has repercussions on its most conscious elements. Among the groups who had broken with Stalinism while still defending the October revolution, debate was not easy in the 20s and 30s, and discussion between the communist left and the anarchists was particularly difficult throughout the period of counter-revolution.

As we saw above, the fact that the outcome of the Russian revolution seemed to provide grist to the mill of its criticisms of marxism meant that the dominant attitude within the anarchist movement was to reject any discussion with the ‘inevitably authoritarian’ marxists of the communist left. And this was all the more true given that in the 1930s the anarchist movement was much better known than the small groups of the communist left, largely because of the key position occupied by the anarchists in Spain, where one of the most decisive historical events of this period took place.

At the same time, while the anarchist movement generally considered that the events in Spain were a confirmation of the validity of its ideas, the communist left saw them above all as proof of their failure, and this for a long time made collaboration with the anarchists very difficult. We should however bear in mind that Bilan did not put all the anarchists in the same pot: for example, they published a tribute to the Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri when he was murdered by the Stalinists in May 1937. Berneri had made an intransigent criticism of the policies carried out by the leadership of the Spanish CNT.

More significant was the fact that in 1947 there was a conference which brought together the Italian communist left (the Turin group), the Gauche Communiste de France, the Dutch left and a certain number of internationalist anarchists. One of them even presided over the conference. This shows that even during the counter-revolution, certain militants of the communist left and of internationalist anarchism were animated by a real spirit of openness, showing a will to discuss and an ability to recognise the fundamental criteria which unite revolutionaries above and beyond their differences. These comrades of 1947 give us a lesson and hope for the future[3].

Obviously, the atrocities committed by Stalinism in the usurped name of marxism and communism still weigh very heavily today. They function as an emotional wall which gets in the way of sincere debate and loyal collaboration. The tradition of the - murdered – generations weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living, as Marx put it in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. This wall will not be demolished overnight. However, it is starting to crack. We have to continue the debate which little by little is developing in front of our eyes, maintaining a fraternal atmosphere and always keeping it in mind that we are all sincerely working towards the goal of communism, of a classless society. ICC August 2010

In July, following its April release of footage of a US Apache helicopter firing on civilians, including children, Wikileaks, coordinating with the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times, released 92,000 secret US documents dating from January 2004 to December 2009, relating to the war in Afghanistan. Thousands more were held back. Julian Assange, the prime mover behind Wikileaks, said that “you have to dig down in the archives to understand”. Not much archaeology is needed. The leaks show, in the words of the US military itself, the atrocities carried out against civilians by US, British, French, German and Polish ISAF troops and the cover-ups involved; the scale and extent of the Taliban attacks; the dubious role of Pakistan and the involvement of Iran; assassination squads and special forces at work with ‘collateral’ damage; the lies and misinformation put out by the US and Britain and the other militaries involved and the lack of trust between the ‘allies’. President Obama, initially commenting on the leaks, said that they showed how bad things were under the Bush regime, and the White House used the logs to further blame Bush for “under-resourcing” the war. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said, with the gall of a US war chief, that Wikileaks had “blood on its hands” and that they were damaging to “our relations and reputation in this key part of the world”!

The Guardian calls these Afghan war logs “the unvarnished picture”, but it’s not quite that. These logs are secret, not “top secret” or a higher classification. Much of what they contain (or what’s been reported so far) was in the public domain already and much could have reasonably been surmised from official statements and reporting. A point on the controversial ‘intelligence’ contained in many of the logs is that this is one of the major, most lucrative industries in the whole corrupt ‘state’ of Afghanistan, a state that is rotten to the core; a great deal of the information, at this level, is totally unreliable. The information from higher up is no better: the Afghan intelligence unit, the National Directorate of Security, is a bitter rival of the Pakistani ISI and its intelligence is coloured accordingly. Former US ally and powerful warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar[1], is involved with Iranian intelligence units, further muddying the waters. US Major-General Michael Flynn said in January that foreign newspaper articles about Afghanistan were more useful than intelligence gathered on the ground.

What the logs clearly show, though, is the extent and depth of the war – the sheer scale of it all and the imperialist rivalries, killings and chaos that it is spreading. They show the real nature of the war, the atrocities, torture, intrigues, the corruption and the growing recognition that the war in unwinnable. The idea of a stable Afghan government in 2, 4 or 10 years time is manifestly risible. By the end of this month 100,000 US forces will be on the ground, plus 50,000 others, tens of thousands of ‘contractors’ and mercenaries and thousands of NGOs more or less representing the interests of the states that they come from; plus hundreds of thousands of Afghan soldiers. The current propaganda from ISAF/NATO is about how civilian casualties have been reduced through their policy of “courageous restraint” and how the Taliban are increasing civilian deaths. There’s no doubt about the latter as the war spreads; but General Petraeus’s recent orders to “pursue the enemy relentlessly” can only mean more civilian grief. There’s no one Taliban enemy but factions, ethnicities, tribes and even local farmers taking up arms against the military despoliation of their lives and land. One of the factors of this war is that whenever there’s an ISAF push, in Kandahar or Helmand for example, Taliban and anti-coalition forces appear where they didn’t exist before. To add to the chaos being generated, Afghan border guards, police and army units have been fighting each other in some instances. This is turning out not to be a fight against the Taliban or al-Qaida, but an increasingly complex local and regional war involving Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara factions with wider powers interceding.

The war is spreading

The war is spreading, involving and arousing other forces of imperialism. Pakistani territory and peoples have been hit by ‘black’ US special units, Warthog warplanes, Apache helicopters, drones and howitzer shells, and there has even been bombing by B52s in order to deny Taliban the safe havens described as “unacceptable... intolerable” by the White House. This is the slow implementation of the threat made several years ago by the US to “bomb Pakistan back into the Stone Age”. Afghan President Karzai has had secret meetings with the Pakistani secret services (ISI), with the latter encouraging rapprochement between his faction and the ISI-sponsored jihadi network of Sira-juddin Haqqani[2], giving the latter the Pashtun south and consolidating Karzai in Kabul (the US was not party to these talks). In echoes of the Great Game between Britain and Russia over a hundred years ago, Pakistan regards the small, but significant presence of India in what they claim as their backyard with the fear and horror of a threatened imperialism. This danger is highlighted in a report by Matt Waldmen of the Harvard Carr Centre, documenting how the ISI “orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences (the Taliban... even being) represented as participants or observers on the Taliban supreme leadership council, the Quetta Shura”. As William Dalrymple says in The Guardian, 2.7.10, Afghanistan is turning into a proxy war between India and Pakistan.

Behind Pakistan, China lurks in the shadows, and in the geo-strategic games being played out, particularly in the confrontation with Iran, US and British forces have a free rein along the Afghan/Iranian border. This latter is one of the ‘values’ of the US presence in Afghanistan. There are further tensions within ISAF/NATO itself; disagreements and unilateral actions involving Germany, France, Holland, Canada, with US ‘policy’ only demonstrating the tendency towards imperialist chaos in and beyond Afghanistan itself.

Iraq: the war continues

The war in Iraq is instructive here. President Obama, who called it “a dumb war”, has now said that he has brought it to “a responsible end... as promised and on schedule”. This will obviously be news to the people of Iraq where more civilians are living in intolerably frightful conditions and more are dying than in Afghanistan. In Iraq there is still no functioning government 5 months after ‘democratic’ elections; and, from nothing, al-Qaida is now firmly established there. At any rate, the US won’t be leaving Iraq any time soon but retreating behind its fortresses. As Seumus Milne shows in The Guardian, 5.8.10, at least 50,000 US troops (plus British forces and tens of thousands of mercenaries) will remain in 94 bases, “advising, training... providing security and carrying out counter-terrorism measures”. In fact, as Milne makes clear, there is a “surge” of private contractors to be based in “enduring presence posts” across Iraq. Killings and torture are still commonplace here, health and education have worsened as has the position of women; fifteen hundred checkpoints divide the capital and ordinary Iraqis protesting on the streets about the frequent power cuts have been labelled “hooligans” and attacked by Iraqi troops. If the Iraq war has been a monumental and bloody failure on the part of US and British imperialism then not only are these latter still very much involved but are also now locked into an even bloodier and irrational mess in Afghanistan that has even more dangerous implications for the whole region and beyond. Baboon, 12.8.10

Capitalism needs unemployment to function

Unemployment is integral to capitalist accumulation, enabling the system to indirectly force the working class to accept the working conditions that cost capital the least. The oversupply of labour helps keep the price of labour down and helps the capitalist in the drive for profits. In the classical periods of depression during the nineteenth century the oversupply became particularly acute, forcing labour costs down rapidly and putting pressure on those still employed to increase productivity for fear of losing their jobs. In the nineteenth century periods of boom, surplus labour allowed expanding capitalism to take on workers quickly without poaching them from other parts of the economy or causing wages to rise to the point where they threatened the accumulation cycle.

Unemployment and the welfare state

Unemployment has any number of serious consequences for those individuals and communities that are subjected to it: rising crime, drug abuse, ill-health. Studies suggest that long-term unemployment can reduce life expectancy typically by around seven years. These consequences often drive the working class to react. If out of work you don’t have the strike weapon, but the unemployed can organise themselves, and can unite with those who are still in work. The greatest fear of the ruling class is that such reactions will take on revolutionary forms but other forms of social unrest can unsettle the bourgeoisie.

Unemployment and crisis

Whatever can be read into the official figures it is clear that behind them the level of unemployment and underemployment in the economy is a growing problem for capitalism. The fact that real unemployment has persisted at a high level for decades shows that for capitalism the unemployed are less a reserve army and more a permanent reminder of the bourgeoisie’s inability to draw millions into productive (or even unproductive!) work.

Just one example: on the Canadian border, despite various crackdowns, the business of “drugs for guns” as well as for cash is just as active if not as dramatic as the southern US border region. Canadian police estimate one hundred thousand British Columbians engaged in the marijuana business alone. There’s a veritable United Nations of organised criminal gangs of tens of thousands involved in cross-border drug-running from Canada into the United States with home grown outlaw motor-cycle gangs involved. Simon Jenkins above argues that there should be a relative weight between “hard” and “soft” drugs with an element of decriminalisation involved. But he himself, though he can only see a way out within capitalism, is correct about the hypocrisy of the “war on drugs” and quotes the words of the UN’s prohibitionist drugs czar, Antonio Maria Costa with justifiable anger: Costa recently suggested that $352 billion of drug cartel’s money helped to stave off the collapse of the world’s economic system in 2008-9 by providing much needed liquidity. But even this is not the major indication of the scale of the drugs industry and its relationship to the irrationality and decomposition of capitalist society.

Drugs and imperialism in Afghanistan

For some years now, the poppy, as a symbol of the carnage wrought by war, has had an added piquancy. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has detailed Afghan poppy cultivation as increasing from 64% of the world’s heroin production seven years ago to just over 92% today. It also estimated the number of Afghans involved in the whole production and distribution process as between 1.7 to 2.3 million. Over the same period the farm-gate price of dry opium at harvest time has fallen by 69%. The British military occupation of Helmand province has overlooked the largest expansion of the cultivation of poppy production now extending to over 70,000 hectares. In the context of imperialism, the “war on drugs” is just as fraudulent as the “war on terror”. In both cases capitalism is driven to use the decay of its system in order to prop up the self-same system. This has consequences that can be seen, unseen, debated or simply not cared about as far as the devastation caused to humanity is concerned. In early 2007, the UN estimated there were around one million opium addicts in Afghanistan, 600,000 under 15 and a growing number of women (Al Jazeerah, 17.5.07). Cheap heroin from Afghanistan is having a devastating effect on Iran, India, Russia the US, Canada and China, where it’s causing particular social instability, along with the consequences of AIDs and other diseases, prostitution and the elements of slavery that go along with it. In the major European states the effects of the misery are felt right up to the Scottish islands where newly unemployed fishermen, solid and strong members of the community, with compensation in their pockets, have fallen into the arms of Madame Joy. From one side of the world to the other, from the poorest to the relatively better off, cheap Afghan heroin is wreaking havoc.

A week or two ago newspapers(also BBC, 12th September) were reporting a whistleblower talking about “large quantities” of opium being exported from Afghanistan on US, Canadian and British military aircraft. This is quite possible and doesn’t have to be a deliberate policy of the military, but it is a direct consequence of imperialism. When opium production in Afghanistan began to take off in the early 90s, rivalling Colombia and Burma in the heroin trade, the CIA funded and supported the Afghan drugs lord, Ahmed Shah Massoud. MI6 also armed and funded him and British intelligence taught his immediate entourage English[2]; prior to that the Russian KGB was involved with him as was French intelligence. Since the west’s direct intervention in Afghanistan from late 2001, Afghan poppy production has increased 33-fold. According to Britain’s ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray in a 2007 piece in the Daily Mail, western intelligence agencies helped Afghanistan go from simple poppy farming to industrial-scale conversion into heroin with, needless to say, the direct implication of the Afghan state. The big change here is the export of heroin rather than opium and this needs large factories, volumes of chemicals imported, labour and a lot of transport to ship the refined product out (it’s one of the many ironies of Afghanistan that the west is paying the Taliban to at least partly watch over the transportation of refined heroin). Before 1979, very little opium came from Afghanistan to the west but then the CIA in its anti-Russian campaign trucked arms to Karachi one way from whence they returned laden with heroin (The Road to 9.11, UCP, 2007).

The role of imperialism’s secret services in the drug business has been detailed since World War II: the CIA and the Corsican mafia’s involvement in the cocaine trade in the late 40s – the famous “French Connection”; Burma, Laos and Thailand in the Golden Triangle where the CIA flew drugs all over south-east Asia; Panama in the 70s and US involvement with drugs through their puppet Noriega; Vietnam, where the CIA’s “Air America” flew drugs between Laos and Hong Kong; the cocaine trade in Haiti in the 80s; the Iran-Contra “guns in, drugs out” policy of the CIA and, more recently, the CIA’s rendition “torture taxis” being used to pick up and transport drugs through Gatwick and other European airports (The Independent, 17.1.10)with, one would think, the complicity of those states or at least a blind eye being turned. The CIA and the Pakistani secret service through the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, also used by British intelligence and Mossad, was a major factor in financing from opium profits the US, Pakistani, Saudi, British jihad against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The drugs trade: a noble capitalist tradition

This is just part of the extent of imperialism’s role in the drug trade and the abject hypocrisy of the “war on drugs”. From further back, in order to underline this point, we have the example of the Anglo-French Opium Wars against China. To quote Karl Marx from the New York Daily Tribune, 25.9.1858: (the) “Christianity-canting and civilisation-mongering British government... In its imperial capacity it affects to be a thorough stranger to the contraband opium trade and even enters into treaties proscribing it”. There’s nothing new under capitalism’s sun; thus we see British Prime Minister Lord Palmerstons’ “war on drugs” while conducting wars for the forced cultivation, propagation and sale of opium. Some of this was also sold to the working class in Britain under the benevolent title of “Godfrey’s Cordial”, an opiate used to dope children while both parents went out to work[3], raising a generation of opium addicts. While this was in some respects the “revenge” of China and India, the whole opium trade was totally irrational and at the expense of legitimate commerce. The East India Company ceased to become direct exporters of opium by the end of the 1700s but it became its producers, while the company’s own ships were sanctimoniously forbidden from trafficking the drug. Despite the attempts of the Celestial Empire to fight the importation of British production of Indian opium into China, Britain and Palmerston facilitated the “trade” by force of arms. Marx pointed to this irrationality and contradiction of the expansion of capitalism without moralising. But in the New York Daily Tribune, 20.9.1858, in an article titled ‘Trade or Opium?’, he quotes the Englishman Montgomery Martin: “Why, the ‘slave trade’ was merciful compared to the ‘opium trade’. We did not destroy the bodies of the Africans, for it was in our immediate interest to keep them alive; we did not debase their natures, corrupt their minds, nor destroy their souls (Well, just a little, B). But the opium seller slays the body after he has corrupted, degraded and annihilated the moral being of unhappy sinners, while, every hour is bringing new victims to a Moloch which knows no satiety, and where the English murderer and Chinese suicide vie with each other in offerings at his shrine”.

It’s been said that Marx supported the opium wars of Britain against China, but this isn’t true and could have come from a misreading from the Communist Manifesto about how capitalism’s cheap commodities “batter down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarian’s intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate”. In fact in this case it wasn’t cheap commodities but gunboats, artillery and opium – the latter cheap enough to give the East India Company and thus the British state a return of some 800% on volumes of this particular “trade”.

A final quote from Marx, from the newspaper article above, on the fanciful irony of this whole bizarre situation: “While the semi-barbarian stood on the principle of morality, the civilised opposed to him the principle of self. That a giant empire, containing almost one-third of the human race, vegetating in the teeth of time, insulated by the forced exclusion of general intercourse, and thus contriving to dupe itself with delusions of Celestial perfection – that such an empire should at last be overtaken by fate on occasion of a deadly duel in which the representatives of the antiquated world appears prompted by ethical motives, while the representatives of overwhelmingly modern society fights for the privilege of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest markets – this, indeed, is a sort of tragical couplet stranger than any poet would ever dared to fancy”.

Today, when the contradictions of capitalism are reaching screaming point and the relationship of imperialism and drugs are just one more expression of this, we are treated to the farcical couplet of the “war on terror” and the “war on drugs”.

Baboon, 24.9.10

Trotsky

At the beginning of the Second World War, Trotsky, after a life of ardent dedication to the cause of the working class, was killed by a pick-axe wielded by an agent of the GPU. Despite very serious political errors, Trotsky’s contribution to the workers’ movement is immense. Arrested many times during his life, expelled and exiled, he never stopped working for the perspective of revolution. As a very young propagandist for the social democratic paper Iskra, as an unrivalled orator, he was the president of the Petrograd Soviet in the revolution of 1905 in Russia. Although he had some important disagreements with Lenin, and though he had been forced into exile in the USA, he returned to Russia and joined the Bolshevik party in May 1917. He played a decisive role in the October revolution, and in the formation of the Red Army, which was revolutionary Russia’s rampart against the attacks of the counter-revolutionary White armies and of the Allied forces who worked together to crush the communist plague[1].

Trotsky played the particularly thankless role – since it was criticised from all sides – of chief negotiator of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany in March 1918, the result of which was to give the population of Russia a short breathing space. Trotsky was also at Lenin’s side in the work of the Communist International, many of whose founding documents he wrote. His History of the Russian Revolution is a fundamental reference for understanding the whole importance of this historic event. And Trotsky’s literary heritage, whether on the political, historical, cultural or theoretical level, is immense, a testament to Marx’s motto that “Nothing human is alien to me”.

Trotsky’s theory of the ‘permanent revolution’, despite the errors of analysis which went with it (such as the idea that the proletariat had to carry out the bourgeois revolution in countries where the bourgeoisie was too weak to vanquish feudalism) was still one of the sources of Stalin’s hatred for him. This was because the theory contained the fundamental idea that the revolutions of the 20th century could not stop at bourgeois and national tasks and was thus contrary to the theory of ‘socialism in one country’ and of ‘revolution by stages’ which was the basis of Stalinism in the 1920s and 30s.

In his later years, Trotsky, who used to say that “reality will not forgive a single theoretical error” defended many opportunist positions such as the policy of entryism into the social democratic parties, the United Front, the ‘working class’ nature of the Stalinist USSR – positions which the communist left rightly criticised in the 1930s. But he never joined the bourgeois camp, which the Trotskyists did do after his death. In particular, on the question of imperialist war, he still defended the traditional position of the revolutionary movement: the transformation of imperialist war into civil war. In the Manifesto, the so-called Alarm, of the 4th International which he wrote to take an unambiguous position on generalised imperialist war, we read:

“The 4th International bases its policies not on the military fortunes of capitalist states but on the transformation of imperialist war into a war of the workers against the capitalists, for the overthrow of the ruling class in all countries, for the world socialist revolution” (Manifesto of the 4th International, May 29 1940). This is what the Trotskyists forgot and betrayed.

The more the world imperialist war intensified, the more the elimination of Trotsky became a central objective for the world bourgeoisie[2], and for Stalin in particular.

In order to buttress his power and develop the policies which made him the principal architect of the counter-revolution, Stalin had first eliminated numerous revolutionaries by sending them into the camps. They included many old Bolsheviks and companions of Lenin, those who had played a key role in the October revolution. But this was not enough. The most dangerous of the Bolsheviks, even though by now in exile, was still Trotsky. Stalin had already struck him hard by murdering his son Leon Sedov in Paris in 1938. Now it was Trotsky himself who had to be eliminated, And this murder had an even greater significance than the killing of the other Bolsheviks and members of the Russian communist left.

Anton Pannekoek

On 28 April 1960 Anton Pannekoek died after over 50 years of combat for the working class. At the beginning of the 20th century he had made his presence felt in the workers’ movement during the struggle against the revisionist current, initially within the Dutch movement as represented by Troelstra. Along with Gorter, he denounced all collaboration with liberal factions of the bourgeoisie in parliament: “neither a conciliatory attitude, nor an approach to the bourgeois parties, nor the abandonment of our demands are the means to obtaining anything. We can only do this by strengthening our organisations, in number and in class understanding and consciousness, so that they appear to the bourgeoisie as increasingly menacing and terrifying forces” (Pannekoek and Gorter, ‘Marxism and Revisionism’, Nieuw Tijd, 1909).

When he moved to Germany in 1906, to deliver a course at the SDP school, he soon got into conflict with the party leadership, with Kautsky among others, on the importance of autonomous mass action by the workers. In 1911, he was the first of the socialists to affirm, following Marx in the wake of the Paris Commune, that the workers’ struggle against capitalist domination had no choice but to destroy the bourgeois state: “The struggle of the proletariat is not simply a struggle against the bourgeoisie for state power: it is a struggle against sate power” (‘Mass Action and Revolution’, Neue Zeit, 1912, cited in Lenin’s State and Revolution).

With the outbreak of world war in 1914, Pannekoek took a firm position against the treason of the social democratic leaders in the Second International. During the war he became a sympathiser of the ISD (International Socialists of Germany) in Bremen and of the SDP in Holland, writing articles against the pro-war policy. In a letter to Van Ravensteyn, dated 22 October 1915, he explained that he had rallied to the initiatives of the left wing at Zimmerwald. Later on he expressed his unconditional solidarity with the Russian workers when they took power through the soviets in 1917, and he never ceased propagandising for the world revolution. “What we had been hoping for has now arrived. On 7 and 8 November, the workers and soldiers of Petrograd overthrew the Kerensky government. And it is probable that this revolution will extend to the whole of Russia. A new period is opening up, not only for the Russian revolution but for the proletarian revolution in Europe (‘The Russian Revolution’, de Nieuwe Tijd, 1917)

When the majority excluded from the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) founded, in April 1920 a new Party, the KAPD ( Communist Workers Party of Germany), Pannekoek was an inspiration to its programme. This document summarised the most important positions of the new period. Pannekoek (like Rosa Luxemburg until her murder in 1919) was, at the beginning of the 1920s, a critical but passionate defender of the October revolution.

But this did not prevent him from eventually drawing mistaken conclusions about the defeat of the 1917 revolution in Russia. He arrived at the view that the Bolsheviks had in fact led a bourgeois revolution. Why? Not only because, in the Russia of 1917, there were still vestiges of feudalism, of dispersed forms of petty bourgeois property, but also because Lenin had not understood the distinction between proletarian materialism and bourgeois materialism (see John Harper – alias Pannekoek – Lenin as Philosopher, 1938).

For any revolutionary today, the work of Pannekoek, despite these later errors, remains an essential reference point, if only because he was, along with other left communists, a bridge between the end of the social democratic Second International and the beginning of the Third, Communist International, a period which went from 1914 to 1919, and because he then continued to develop his theoretical contribution to the movement. As he said later: “Our task is principally a theoretical one: finding and indicating through study and discussion the best route for the action of the working class” (letter to Castoriadis of Socialisme ou Barbarie, 8 November 1953).

Jan Appel

On 4 May 1985, the last great figure of the Communist International, Jan Appel, died at the age of 95. This was a life lived for the liberation of humanity.

The revolutionary wave at the beginning of the 20th century was defeated. Thousands of marxist revolutionaries were killed in Russia and Germany; some even committed suicide. But despite this long night of counter-revolution, Jan Appel remained faithful to marxism, to the working class. He remained convinced that the proletarian revolution would still come.

Appel was formed and tempered in the revolutionary movement in Germany and Holland at the beginning of the 20th century. He fought side by side with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Lenin, Trotsky, Gorter, Pannekok. He fought for the revolution on the streets of Germany in 1919. He was one of those who never betrayed the proletarian cause, a worthy representative of that anonymous mass of the proletariat’s past generations. Their historical struggle has always renounced the glorification of individuals or the search for glory and titles. Like Marx, Engels and so many others, Jan Appel did not seek fame in the sensational capitalist press.

But he also stood out in that anonymous mass of courageous revolutionaries produced by the revolutionary movement of the early 20th century. He left a trace which has allowed the revolutionaries of today to take up the torch. Jan Appel was capable of recognising those who, no less anonymous and for the moment reduced to a small minority, were once again carrying on the communist struggle. Thus we were extremely proud to welcome Jan Appel to the founding Congress of the ICC in Paris in 1976.

Born in 1890, Jan Appel began work very young in the Hamburg shipyards. As early as 1908, he was an active member of the SDP. In the turbulent years of the war, he took part in the discussions about the new questions facing the working class: the attitude to imperialist war and to the Russian revolution. This led him at the end of 1917 or beginning of 1918 to join the left radicals of Hamburg, who had taken up a very clear position on the war and the revolution. In July 1917 the IKD in Hamburg had issued an appeal calling on all revolutionary workers to work for an independent party opposed to the reformist and opportunist politics of the SDP majority. Pushed forward by the workers’ struggles at the end of 1918, he joined Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartakusbund and, after the unification of different groups into the KPD, took up a position of responsibility for the Hamburg section.

On the basis of his active participation in the struggle since 1918, and of his organisational talents, the participants at the founding congress of the KAPD chose Appel and Franz Jung to represent the new party at the second congress of the Third International in Moscow. Their role was to negotiate adhesion to the International and to discuss the treacherous attitude of the KPD Centrale during the Ruhr uprising. To get to Moscow, they had to lead a mutiny on a ship. Once there, they had discussions with Zinoviev, the president of the Communist International, and with Lenin. They held long discussions on the basis of the manuscript of Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, refuting the accusation among other things of syndicalism (i.e. the rejection of the party) and of nationalism.

Several more trips to Moscow were needed before the KAPD was admitted into the CI as a sympathising organisation, participating on this basis at the Third Congress of the CI in n1921.

Appel was active wherever the KAPD or the parallel ‘Workers’ Union’, the AAUD, sent him. He was responsible for the AAU’s weekly Der Klassenkampf in the Ruhr, where he remained until November 1923.

At the Third Congress of the CI in 1921, Appel, Meyer, Scwab and Reichenbach were delegated to conduct the final negotiations in the name of the KAPD and to oppose the growing opportunism of the CI. They tried in vain, along with delegates from Bulgaria, Hungary, Luxemburg, Mexico, Spain, Britain, Belgium and the USA , to form a left opposition. At the end of the Congress, ignoring the sarcasms of Bolshevik or KPD delegates, Jan Appel, under the pseudonym Hempel, underlined some of the questions posed for the world revolution: “the Russian comrades are not supermen and they need a counter-weight. This counterweight should be a Communist International which has liquidated all tactics of compromise, of parliamentarism and using the old trade unions”.

Until the end of his days, Jan Appel was convinced that “only the class struggle is important”. We continue his fight.   MW 29/9/10

This series has the aim of showing that the members of the communist left and the internationalist anarchists have a duty to discuss and even work together. The reason for this is simple. Despite important disagreements, we share key revolutionary positions: internationalism; the rejection of any collaboration and any compromise with bourgeois political forces; the defence of workers taking their struggles into their own hands…[1]

 Despite this, for a long time there have been practically no relations between these two revolutionary currents. Over the last few years we have only just begun to see the first efforts to discuss and work together. This is the fruit of the painful history of the workers’ movement. The attitude of the majority of the Bolshevik party in the years 1918-24 (the indiscriminate banning of the anarchist press, the armed confrontation with Makhno’s army, the bloody suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, etc) opened up a huge gulf between revolutionary Marxists and anarchists. But it was above all Stalinism, which massacred thousands of anarchists[2] in the name of communism, which led to decades of trauma[3].

Today there are still fears about debating and working together. To go beyond these difficulties, you have to be convinced that we do indeed belong to the same camp, the camp of the proletariat and the revolution, despite our disagreements. But that is not enough. We also have to make a conscious effort to develop the quality of our debates. “Rising from the abstract to the concrete” is always the most perilous step. This why in this article we will try to be more precise about the spirit in which this possible and necessary relationship between the communist left and internationalist anarchism needs to be approached.

The absolute necessity for constructive criticism among revolutionaries

Our press has often repeated, in different ways, the argument that anarchism still bears the original mark of petty bourgeois ideology. This radical criticism is often seen as unacceptable by anarchist militants, including those who are usually the most open to discussion. And for many, the use of the term “petty bourgeois” in connection with anarchism is enough for some to decide they don’t want to listen to the ICC at all. Recently, on our internet forum, a participant who refers to himself as an anarchist has called this view a real “insult”. But this is not our view. However deep our reciprocal disagreements, they should not make us lose sight of the fact that the militants of the communist left and of internationalist anarchism are debating together as revolutionaries. What’s more, the internationalist anarchists also make many criticisms of marxism, such as its alleged natural penchant for authoritarianism and reformism. The website of the CNT-AIT in France, for example, contains numerous passages of this kind: “The Marxists (after 1871) progressively became a force for lulling the exploited to sleep and gave birth to working class reformism”[4]. “Marxism is responsible for orienting the working class towards parliamentary activity…it is only when this has been understood that we can see that road to the social revolution passes through the happy land of anarchism and means by-passing Marxism”[5]. These are not “insults” but radical criticisms….which we obviously disagree with totally. It’s in this sense of open criticism that our analysis of the nature of anarchism has to be considered. This analysis needs to be summed up here.

In a section headed ‘The petty bourgeois core of anarchism’ in our book Communism is not just a nice idea but a material necessity, we read:

“The growth of anarchism in the second half of the 19th century was the product of the resistance of the petty bourgeois strata - artisans, intellectuals, shopkeepers, small peasants - to the triumphant march of capital, a resistance to the process of proletarianisation which was depriving of them of their former social ‘independence’. Strongest in those countries where industrial capital arrived late, in the eastern and southern peripheries of Europe, it expressed both the rebellion of these strata against capitalism, and their inability to look beyond it, to the communist future; instead it gave voice to their yearning for a semi-mythical past of free local communities and strictly independent producers, unencumbered by the oppressions of industrial capital and the centralising bourgeois state.
The ‘father’ of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was the classical incarnation of this attitude, with his fierce hatred not only of the state and the big capitalists, but of collectivism in all forms, including trade unions, strikes, and similar expressions of working class collectivity. Against all the real trends developing within capitalist society, Proudhon’s ideal was a ‘mutualist’ society founded upon individual artisan production, linked together by free exchange and free credit” (first published in 1994). 

Or again, in ‘is it possible to reconcile anarchism and marxism’, in International Review 102 (2001)

“In the genesis of anarchism you have the standpoint of the worker who has just been proletarianised and who rejects his new status with every fibre of his being. Having only just emerged from the peasantry or the artisans, often half-way between worker and artisan (like the Jura watchmakers for example), these workers expressed a regret for the past faced with the drama of their descent into the condition of the working class. Their social aspiration was to turn the wheel of history backwards. At the heart of this conception was nostalgia for small-scale property. This is why, following Marx, we analyse anarchism as the expression of the penetration of petty-bourgeois ideology into the ranks of the proletariat.” 

In other words, we recognise that, from its birth, anarchism was marked by a profound feeling of revolt against capitalist exploitation and barbarity but that it also inherited the vision of the “artisans, shopkeepers and small peasants” who played a key role in this birth. This does not at all mean that today all the anarchist groups are “petty bourgeois”. It is obvious that the CNT, the KRAS[6] and others are animated by the revolutionary spirit of the working class. More generally, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many workers espoused the anarchist cause and really fought for the abolition of capitalism and the coming of communism, from Louise Michel to Durruti or from Voline to Malatesta. During the revolutionary wave which began in 1917, the anarchists were often in the front line of the workers’ ranks. Within the anarchist movement there has since been a constant struggle against this original tendency to be influenced by the radicalised petty bourgeoisie. This is partly what lies behind the deep divergences between the individualist, mutualist, reformist and internationalist-communist anarchists, with the latter alone really belonging to the revolutionary camp. But even the internationalist anarchists still show the influence of the historic roots of their movement, as can be seen for example in a tendency to replace the struggle of the working class with calls for “autonomous popular resistance”. The ICC thinks that it is its historical responsibility to honestly bring all these disagreements into broad daylight in order to make a contribution to strengthening the revolutionary camp as a whole. As it is the responsibility of the internationalist anarchists to bring out their criticisms of marxism. This should not be an obstacle to holding fraternal debates and eventually working together, on the contrary[7].

For the ICC, is the relationship between marxists and anarchists one of teacher to pupil?

The ICC does not address these criticisms to the anarchists like a teacher correcting a pupil. However, interventions on our forum have reproached our organisation for having a “professorial” tone. Leaving aside matters of taste for this or that literary style, there is a real theoretical question behind these remarks. Does the communist left have a role as a guide for internationalist anarchism or represent a model for it to follow? Do we think that an enlightened minority has to inject the truth or a clear understanding? Or, as a more concrete example, do we see the ICC as some kind of tutor for the CNT-AIT?

In fact, such a notion would be in total contradiction with the approach of the communist left; on a deeper level, it poses the question of the link between revolutionary communists and their class.

In his letter to Ruge, published in the Franco-German Yearbook in 1843, Marx affirmed: “We do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for”

Revolutionaries, be they marxists or internationalist anarchists, do not stand above the working class; they are an integral part of it. Their organisations are the collective secretion of the proletariat.

The ICC has never seen itself as an organisation whose task is to impose its views in the working class or on other revolutionary groups. We fully identify with these lines from the 1848 Communist Manifesto:

“The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement”.

It was the same principle that Bilan, organ of the Italian communist left, brought to life in the first issue of its review in 1933:

“Certainly, our fraction lays claim to a long political past, a profound tradition in the Italian and international movement, an ensemble of basic political positions. But it does not argue that its political past of itself means that others should accept the solutions it puts forward in the present situation. On the contrary, it is up to revolutionaries to verify in the light of events the positions it currently defends as well as the political positions contained in its basic documents”.

Since its origins, our organisation has attempted to cultivate the same spirit of openness and the same will to discuss. Thus, as far back as 1977, we wrote:

“In our relationship with groups of this type, who are close to the ICC but outside it, our aim is clear. We attempt to engage in fraternal debate with them and take up the different questions confronting the working class....We can really only fulfil our role...if we are able:

a. to avoid considering ourselves as the one and only revolutionary group that exists today;

b. to firmly defend our positions in front of them;

c. to maintain an open attitude to discussion with them, a discussion that must take place in public and not through private correspondence” (‘Resolution on proletarian political groups’, IR 11)

This is a rule of behaviour for us. We are convinced of the validity of our positions (while remaining open to a reasoned critique), but we don’t take them as the solution to all the problems of the world. For us they are a contribution to the collective struggle of the working class. This is why we attach such importance to the culture of debate. In 2007, the ICC devoted a whole orientation text to this one question: “If revolutionary organisations are to fulfil their fundamental role of the development and spreading of class-consciousness, the cultivation of collective, international, fraternal and public discussion is absolutely essential” ‘The culture of debate – a weapon of the class struggle’ IR 131.

Of course, the attentive reader will have noticed that all these quotations also contain, alongside affirmations of the need for debate, the insistence that the ICC must firmly defend its political positions. There is no contradiction here. Wanting open discussion does not mean that all ideas are equal and that everything is valid. As we underlined in our 1977 text: “Far from being in contradiction with each other, firmness in our principles and openness in our attitude mutually complement each other. We are not afraid of discussion precisely because we are convinced of the validity of our positions”.

In the past as in the future, the workers’ movement has had and will have a need for frank and fraternal discussion between its different revolutionary tendencies. A multiplicity of points of view and approaches will confer a whole richness to the struggle of the proletariat and the development of its consciousness. We are repeating ourselves, but inside the territory shared by revolutionaries there can be deep disagreements. These must absolutely be raised and discussed. We are not asking the internationalist anarchists to renounce their own criteria or what they consider to be their theoretical patrimony. On the contrary, we want them to draw it out with as much clarity as possible in response to the questions posed to all of us; we want them to accept critiques and polemics in the way that we do – not to see them as the final word but as contributions to an open debate. We are not saying to these comrades: throw down your weapons in face of the superiority of marxism.

We profoundly respect the revolutionary nature of the internationalist anarchists. We know that we will fight side by side when massive class movements appear on the scene. But we will defend with equal conviction (and, we hope, no less convincingly) our positions on the Russian revolution and the Bolshevik party, on centralisation, the period of transition, the decadence of capitalism, the anti-working class nature of trade unionism…..

We are not here to pose as schoolteachers or just to persuade a few anarchists to join us but to play a full part in the debate between revolutionaries; a debate which will be both animated and passionate.

To conclude this series of three articles on the communist left and internationalist anarchism we will finish with a few words from Malatesta:

“If we anarchists could make the revolution on our own, or if the socialists[8] could do the same, we could have the luxury of acting on our own account, perhaps lending each other a hand now and again. But the revolution will be made by the whole proletariat, the whole people, in which the socialists and the anarchists are just a minority, even when the people have lot of sympathy for one or the other. To divide us from each other is to divide the proletariat, or more exactly, it is to cool down its sympathy and make it less inclined to follow this noble common socialist orientation which the anarchists and socialists together can help to triumph within the revolution. It is up to revolutionaries, and the anarchists and socialists in particular, to make sure this happens, by not accentuating their disagreements and above all by occupying themselves with goals that unite them and help them attain the best possible revolutionary result”.(Volunta, 1 May, 1920)

ICC September 2010

There has been a great scandal in the media about the atrocious state of athletes’ accommodation and facilities at the Commonwealth Games site in Delhi: big name athlete’s pulling out, various teams delaying their travel or staying in hotels while they wait for the village to be brought up to standard. The Commonwealth Games ‘brand’ has been damaged!

But this pales into insignificance compared to the much greater scandal related to the construction – the conditions faced by workers at the site.

70 workers have died in accidents on the sites, and 109 on Delhi Metro construction sites, – but since many workers are not registered no-one knows what the real toll is. And this is hardly surprising:

“Workers often labour without elementary safety precautions, like helmets, masks and gloves. If workers are given boots, the costs of these are sometimes cut from their wages. Accidents were reported from almost all the sites, but these were rarely reported to the Commissioner, Workmen’s Compensation, and their legal reparation was withheld or diluted. Rarely are medical services available on site, beyond a first aid kit.” (The Hindu, 1.8.10)

The workers risking their lives are not even getting the legal minimum wage, “Workers are paid two-thirds or half of the minimum wage on all sites… and made to live in sub-human conditions,” said Shashi Saxena for the People’s Union of Democratic Rights (The Hindu, 16.8.10). In particular, they are working 10 to 12 hours a day, into the night, day in day out without any day off, and robbed of the pittance they are ‘legally’ due for overtime: Rs 100 (approx £1.50) for a 10 hour day, Rs 200 (approx £3) for a 12 hour day.

Living accommodation was described as ‘basic’ by the PUDR: insufficient toilets, lack of hygiene, sanitation deplorable, a breading ground for malaria and dengue fever, in huts made of tin and plastic sheets totally inappropriate to the extremes of Delhi weather – very hot in summer, cold in winter. And there is worse – the company Times of India Crest recruited a worker, Vijay, from a village. He arrived to find “The dug-up footpath where he was to lay the lovely pink stones would function as work place during daytime, bedroom at night”. 150,000 migrant workers were recruited to work on the project. Those that are responsible for children have no choice but see them living in these deplorable conditions, without any chance of school.

These dangerous conditions do not just apply to the Commonwealth Games, as the deaths of 43 textile workers in Kolkata in March illustrates (https://en.internationalism.org/ci/2010/workers-burn-india-shines [173]).

Lastly, just as in Bejing for the Olympics, just as in South Africa for the World Cup, slum dwellers have been cleared out of the way for the big event, as though they were so much vermin. A night shelter was demolished last December leaving 250 homeless; a slum housing 365 Dalit Tamil families was bulldozed in April to put up a car part for the Games. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit admitted “We will have about 30 lakh [3,000,000] homeless in the city after the Games” (Outlook, April 2010).

India’s economy: a malignant growth

India’s economy is predicted to grow by 8.5% this year, based on just this sort of fierce exploitation, “its private companies are strong. Indian capitalism is driven by millions of entrepreneurs all furiously doing their own thing” (The Economist, 2.10.10). That’s how capitalism likes it.

It has not translated into better conditions for the working class. The plight of workers on the Commonwealth Games site is just one example of the brutality of exploitation faced by workers. Permanent jobs are decreasing while casualisation increases, as at Hero Honda in Gurgaon, despite increasing production to 4.3 million bikes. Meanwhile the economy has seen job losses in textile and diamond industries. Unemployment stood at 10.7% in 2009, officially – the reality is much greater, as can be seen at any station or tourist attraction as dozens clamour for a few rupees to drive a rickshaw or sell a souvenir. These are people capitalism has failed to integrate into its production.

As more money has come into the economy prices are going up to those of ‘affluent’ economies, leaving workers struggling to afford essentials like transport, health, education, housing, let alone movies. Food inflation is officially 18%.

While the growth rates are high, the Indian economy has in no way escaped the conditions of declining capitalism that are threatening so many with recession. Growth has been fuelled by foreign institutional investors who were part of the casino economy before 2008. This pushed the debt-to-GDP ratio up 20 points, with public debt at 83% of GDP in 2007. It has been based on the service sector, with outsourcing of call centres etc. The country still lacks the infrastructure necessary for a large development of industry. The industry that has developed has been the like of small cheap cars, based on equally cheap labour, and destined for the home market of workers in the service industry. As the situation of farmers declines more are forced into the cities – or into suicide – even with the current high growth rates (see ‘The Indian boom: illusion and reality’ [174]).

In any case the erection of large venues like the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic and other stadia for one-off, high profile events, often end up as an expensive white elephant and is not necessarily an indication of economic health.

The only answer is the struggle of the working class

It is impossible to read about the horrendous conditions faced by workers in India without indignation on a human level, clearly illustrated by the PUDR and CRY (Child Relief and You) which collected many of the statistics used in this article. However, the answer to these crimes does not lie in democratic reform – India is already a democracy and capitalism continues to trample workers underfoot; nor in legal protection for workers – the law is simply broken; nor in charity, however much that may help various individuals. Nor should we wait for the Indian economy to grow to provide better conditions, since the economy cannot stand apart from the rest of the world which remains crippled with debt, the very debt that is fuelling India’s economic growth.

It is important to understand that these conditions arise from capitalism itself, from the relentless struggle for profit. They can only be abolished by the overthrow of capitalism. Until then they can only be attenuated by massive working class resistance, such as the struggles of car workers in Gurgaon last year, of jute worker in Kolkata, of Air India workers, and of government employees in Kashmir who were able to unite to defend their interests despite the gun battles between the state and separatists (see our website). The only answer is the struggle of the working class. 

Alex 3.10.10

“Ouch! That hurt” was the Sun headline after the government’s October Comprehensive Spending Review. “Osborne whacks Britain” also sounds pretty uncomfortable but, as the paper’s other front page headline explains, the“£81bn cuts for all” are “to save our finances.” It might be unpleasant, but it’s all supposed to be for the good of the nation.

The next day the Sun reported a survey in which 58% of people thought that “the way the government is cutting spending to reduce the government’s deficit” was “unavoidable”. This was despite the fact that a majority thought it was a “desperate gamble” and would affect them personally.

It’s hardly surprising that people think cuts are inevitable. Attacks on living standards were already well underway under the Labour governments of Blair and Brown. This year’s general election had the main parties all offering slight variations on the main cuts theme, and Osborne’s budget and other measures have continued the process since.

As for who is going to be most affected, the Mail and Telegraph both thought that ‘middle class’ households with an income of more than £48,000 would be hardest hit. Two workers in a household both earning about £25,000 are still workers, and still hit, however the right-wing press want to label them.

Most papers took up the report of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) which demonstrated that the poorest would be hit the hardest. The poorest 10% (households with an annual income under £10,200) would be hit 15 times harder than the richest 10%. This comes on top of the Labour years where the gap between rich and poor widened throughout their time in office. It also doesn’t take into account things like food inflation, now running at about 10%, when food is a much more larger proportion of expenditure for the poorest.

It can’t be said too often: we’re not ‘all in this together’. We live in a class-divided society in which a capitalist class and the repressive power of its state rule over and exploit those who only have their labour power to sell. Those who are being asked to pay for the economic crisis of capitalism are not from the ranks of the capitalist class but from the working class.

What will happen as the measures take effect?

The fact that people think that widespread cuts are a ‘desperate gamble’ only reflects the conflicting predictions and proposals of economists. In the US the Federal Reserve has just embarked on a second round of ‘quantitative easing’, pumping more liquidity into the economy at the same time as the European Central Bank is withdrawing some of its emergency liquidity measures. If you look at the economy of the Irish Republic, as another example, its ongoing programmes of severe government cut-backs have lead to nothing except further cuts, with even more harsh measures due to be announced in the next budget on 7 December. Cuts don’t actually seem to work any more than the recourse to debt.

With the question of unemployment in the UK the only guarantee is that it will continue to rise. The government’s estimated figure for the increase in unemployment over the next five years is some 490,000. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has done its sums and come up with some different figures. Its projections actually see a greater impact on the private sector, with, ultimately, the loss of 900,000 jobs, in comparison with the elimination of an estimated 725,000 (about 1 in 8) jobs in the public sector.

Also, it is worth looking at those areas which have been ‘protected’. Many will have reflected on the cuts in spending on prisons and defence and thought ‘if they can cut them they can cut anything’. Look at the NHS. Spending in real terms is advertised as rising by an annual rate of 0.01%. In reality, with an ageing population and the soaring cost of drugs, this will, on some projections, mean a 6% cut in resources available to the NHS. In addition, it should be recalled that Labour had already planned £20 billion worth of ‘savings’ in the NHS through ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’ measures before the election. These particular cuts will of course now be undertaken by the Lib-Con coalition.

When surveying his handiwork George Osborne was proud to say that while Labour had proposed across-the-board cuts of 20% the current government’s proposals only amounted to an average figure across departments of 19%. The IFS has actually shown that Osborne’s cuts are bigger. What the real figures do show is the essential continuity between the parties in the management of the economy – following the demands of the economic crisis with the imposition of austerity.

We’ve been this way before

In many commentaries on the measures adopted or proposed since the onset of the ‘credit crunch’ crisis there have been references to cuts in public spending made under Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s. Alistair Darling, for example, openly said that the cuts Labour would introduce if re-elected would be ‘worse than Thatcher.’ Now Labour spokesman Alan Johnson is saying, as an accusation rather than as a complement, that Cameron/Osborne/Clegg’s cuts will be ‘worse than Thatcher’.

It is worth looking at what happened in the late 1970s/early 1980s to see what is similar and what has changed. The Labour government of Jim Callaghan had entered into an agreement with the unions, the Social Contract, which kept wages down and tried to keep a lid on the class struggle. Towards the end of the Callaghan government the unions were having a great deal of difficulty in selling the ‘Social Con-trick’ (as leftists tended to call it) to the working class. Also, the government’s majority had almost vanished, so it entered into a pact with the Liberal party. Under this arrangement came Phase 4 of Labour’s pay policy. One aspect of this was a 5% limit on wage rises. At a time when inflation was at 20% this was a major attack on working class incomes. Simultaneously, following desperate pleas for support from the International Monetary Fund, Labour introduced massive cuts in public spending. These measures, introduced by Chancellor Denis Healey were the forerunners to the monetarist policies of the Thatcher government. They also led to the wave of struggles of 1978-79 known by the media as the ‘winter of discontent’ which involved Ford workers and lorry drivers as well as workers throughout the public sector.

How do the Labour measures of the late 1970s and the Lib-Lab pact compare with the current Lib-Con Coalition? Total managed expenditure is due to decline in real terms by 3.3% by 2014-15. Compare this with Labour in 1977-78 where real spending was cut by 3.9% in just one year. Add in the rate of inflation that so eroded real wages and it’s easy to see why workers took to the streets to demonstrate and why so many went on strike. Rapid changes in material conditions soon lead to angry protests.

While reflecting on events of thirty years ago it’s a good moment to consider a recent poll of 18-24 -year-olds that found 76% favouring spending cuts against just 16% for tax rises. And the most popular targets for cuts were unemployment benefit (JSA) and building new homes. On the surface this might look strange: after all, aren’t younger people more rebellious than their elders? And wouldn’t those from an age group with high rates of unemployment and with currently large numbers still living with parents actually benefit from not having cuts in these areas?

The first thing to say is that the question on spending cuts is loaded as it asks what measures a government should take if it wants to balance the books. The question effectively demands that we accept the reality of the capitalist crisis, which means ‘heads they win, tails we lose’. For an individual being polled a tax rise seems very real, actual money being taken out of a wallet or purse; whereas the prospect of public spending cuts could seem rather abstract. If you’re 24 or younger you’ll have had no direct experience of the sort of cuts made in the late 1970s and early 80s, no exposure to high inflation rates, and little idea of the solidarity that exists in collective struggles. If the young can sometimes sound just like the least enlightened of their parents’ generation it’s because the reactionary ideas of capitalist society weigh on us all, and it’s in only in times of great social upheaval that the questionings of a minority become increasingly more widespread.

Against the ‘logic’ of capitalism

The richest have done well out of both Labour and Lib-Con governments, and the rescued banks must surely be grateful for the lashings of state hand-outs that have come their way. However, it is important to remember that the domination of capital does not only mean billionaires and their bankers but is a whole mode of production which touches every aspect of social life.

For leftists like the Socialist Workers Party, who talk of socialism and revolution while putting forward ideas that serve the cause of neither, there is the possibility of a democratic capitalism, an exploiting society which can benefit the majority.

Following Osborne’s latest announcements Socialist Worker (21/10/10) declared “There is no need to cut any job or service. But even if cuts were necessary, there are plenty of other ways to raise cash. The richest 1,000 people in Britain have £336 billion and they are getting richer all the time ― their wealth rose by £77 billion last year. The government could raise money by increasing corporation tax and taxing the super-rich. Yet Osborne has promised to cut corporation tax every year that the Tories are in office. The review included a small levy on the banks, but cuts in corporation tax mean they will actually come out with more cash.”

In Socialist Review (November 2010) you can read “According to HM Revenue and Customs, the UK’s ‘tax gap’ - the amount lost through tax evasion, avoidance and non-payment - is £42 billion a year. Why not clamp down on businesses that break the law or exploit tax loopholes? Or why not nationalise Britain’s big five banks, which made state-subsidised profits of over £15 billion in the first half of 2010 alone?”

What’s proposed here are a number of economic reforms inside the capitalist system. More state intervention, some changes in taxes, and a more vigorous approach to tax collection: with such measures there is supposedly ‘no need to cut any job or service’ or, ‘if cuts were necessary,’ there are always ways to raise cash. And haven’t most big British banks been nationalised already?

This vision is in direct opposition to the marxist tradition. Where the SWP call on measures from the capitalist state, the tradition of Marx and Lenin looks to the struggle of the working class and the destruction of the state. Where the SWP looks for ways of raising cash, marxists look toward a society without money, based on human solidarity, where the main principal is ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.

The logic of the capitalist crisis leads to state-imposed austerity; the struggles of the working class give a perspective towards a world-wide human community.

Car , 5/11/10.

The British bourgeoisie has discovered that the state of the economy means it cannot put a battle fleet to sea without the cooperation of the French. However, their political acumen in presenting the crisis to the British public has not diminished in any way. The Tories and the bit part players from the Lib-Dems, with manful assistance from the unions and Labour party apparatchiks, have put across the idea that the whole business about the crisis was a kind of April Fool’s joke and the sole driving idea behind the government’s policy is simply to pare down the size of the state.

The left-wing of the bourgeoisie completely agrees with this. In fact the Labour party and unions, along with the SWP and its like, are the principal players putting forward the idea that the ‘Tory cuts’ are driven by ideology and not economic necessity. Images of customers queuing up outside Northern Rock demanding their savings, nationalisation of the banks, emergency measures taken at the international level to save the world economy: all these phenomena apparently belong to another epoch.

Len McCluskey, the favourite to win the leadership of the Unite union, told the Financial Times about the cuts: “It’s an ideological agenda pursued by the government that is not necessary. Once it starts impacting on hundreds of thousands of jobs – in the private as well as the public sector – more and more people will get angry.”

So there it is. There is no crisis requiring cuts and austerity. People are entitled to ‘feel angry’ with ideologically driven Tories, but should not think that capitalism is riven by some kind of fundamental crisis that renders it incapable of providing for people’s needs. Basically, it will be all right once the Tories are out of government and we can go back to Labour cuts. After all, the unions are a key element in choosing the Labour party leader and are an integral part of the Labour party apparatus, so we can be assured that any cuts coming from that direction were not ideologically driven but actually necessary.

The ‘phoney’ crisis

The theme that the crisis is in some measure unreal is well reflected in an article in the Evening Standard: ‘For most people, it’s just a phoney crisis’. The article quotes Rachel Lomax, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, who puts forward the idea that for most people in Britain, this has been a phoney crisis – something got up by the bankers and the markets, but of little concern to everyday folk. Presumably, ‘everyday folk’ would not be a category that includes those who have been made redundant or those in line to lose a good portion of their housing benefit. Ms Lomax disapproves of this because she thinks that there is insufficient support for the very severe spending cuts announced by Mr. Osborne, and that the government will water them down. In the article the present situation is contrasted with previous episodes of open crisis: “There have been none of the attention-seizing, stomach-churning moments that grab everyone’s attention as in 1992 when Norman Lamont raised interest rates to 15%.”

There is truth in the idea that Lamont’s hike in interest rates had immediate repercussions for a vast swathe of people, including (and especially) those with mortgages (those whom the Standard deems to be ‘everyday folk’). It is true, also, that the bourgeoisie has been successful in creating the impression that the crisis has been contained in the sense that the economy is at least out of the recession and ‘recovering’, albeit in a very limited way. And, more important, it has created a sense that the effects of the crisis are not as generally distributed as might have been feared – particularly not for the better off sections of the population. The worst effects are for the present concentrated on the poorest – although anyone might become one of the poorest depending on the lottery of who loses their job.

This is not a mistake on the part of the bourgeoisie. On the contrary it is quite deliberate. It is necessary to put aside momentary appearances and understand that the crisis deepens over the decades. It does not retreat or become less severe. It is also necessary not to identify the underlying crisis with its secondary manifestations. The threats posed to the financial system a short time ago are not matters that belong to the past and have now ‘gone away’ as the bourgeoisie would very much like us to believe. Undoubtedly Ms Lomax, since she worked for the Bank of England, is aware of this and thinks a little intellectual rigour is in order to ‘pull people along’ behind the government’s cuts. But she should leave the politics to those who know about such matters. There is no ‘pulling people along’ behind the level of austerity implied by the present evolution of the crisis. Above all, there are no sections of the population that are not affected (apart, possibly, from the very rich).

Furthermore, the bourgeoisie would be in a better position if the measures it was taking were actually likely to slow down the evolution of the crisis in a definite way. When Thatcher got rid of industries that were taking their toll on the national economy, because they needed permanent subsidies by the state to make them at all viable, the benefit was clear from the point of view of the bourgeoisie, even if it left behind a legacy of permanent unemployment on a great scale. But the government’s present plans to deal with the large scale deficits left over after the ‘triumphant’ period of ‘40 quarters of uninterrupted growth’ have to address more difficult problems.

Undoubtedly, from the bourgeoisie’s point of view, it is necessary to try and stop the escalation of the state’s expenditure on benefits, but, since the overall plan to scale back spending also requires making 1.5 million unemployed, it is not exactly an easy thing to accomplish.

Similarly, the bourgeoisie require workers to take pay cuts, to accept cuts in hours, to work on a casualised basis (and therefore to earn less). But, to a certain extent, the state has to pick up the tab for this. This is particularly clear in terms of housing benefit.

The number of claimants has risen due to the acceleration in the crisis, the increase in the unemployed in particular. Mr. Osborne is quite right in thinking that it makes no sense for the state to be artificially propping up the level of rents by simply paying the ‘going rate’ to landlords. His response is to put on caps that will cause a great deal of hardship to those dependent on benefits. This is especially so in London where rents are exorbitantly high.

It is necessary to know that housing benefit is not only paid to the unemployed, but many employed workers are dependent on it as well. To see the scale of the problem we can note that the cap that Osborne has put on the benefit is £400 a week. This is admittedly for a 4 bedroom house, but it is over £20,000 a year. That is more than many people earn altogether – certainly after tax (and rent is paid out of after-tax income, after all). Even the bourgeoisie has to accept (as long as they intend people to be housed at all) that a worker cannot spend his or her entire income on rent. Even if there are two earners, it is a lot to ask that one earner only pays rent and one income is left for a family to live on. Furthermore it is easy to find properties advertised in London for nearly £400 a week that have only 3 bedrooms, or two or even one. There is no proportionality between rents and wages. It is a complete understatement to say merely that rents are ‘expensive’. And the capitalist state is not going to pay out its subsidies forever.

What is the underlying problem here? The problem is that the runaway increase in property prices and the attendant growth of buy-to-let landlordism were key drivers of ‘growth’ during the 10 years prior to the open financial crisis and the recession. The Financial Times reported at one point during this period that the landlord sector was the leading growth sector in the economy. The problem with this is that this is not real growth and although individuals may feel a ‘wealth effect’ from higher house prices, higher prices actually make everyone poorer (just as with any other type of inflation). The housing benefit bill covers some of those who are conspicuously and obviously poorer as a result of all this. This is not something the government can wave a magic wand at and it will go away. Nor can it simply distance itself from the problem. The idea of a ‘downsized’ state is a pure illusion as the bourgeoisie try to attend to the accumulation of problems that are attendant on the crisis.

Hardin, 5/11/10.

The first Saturday after the government’s spending review was announced, 23 October, there were a number of demonstrations against cuts up and down the country called by various unions. The number of people participating, varying from 25,000 in Edinburgh, 15,000 in Belfast to 300 in Cardiff, shows that workers here are angry, just as they are in France.

However, the trade union demonstrations provide no viable framework for struggling against cuts in jobs, pay and services, quite the reverse. That’s why we supported the call “on all anarchists and militant workers to join us in forming a ‘Radical Worker’s Bloc’ on the demonstration, not to beg the trade union bureaucrats to take action, but to argue that we fight the cuts based on the principles of solidarity, direct action, and control of our own struggles”. This came from South London Solidarity Federation (see libcom).

The problem with the approach of the unions and their supporters is that they focus on ‘Tory cuts’, putting the deficit down to the bail out of the bankers, to financial speculation – when these are nothing but symptoms of the crisis of capitalism. The cuts are just some policy choice by “a government of millionaires” (Socialist Party leaflet) when “The government could have taxed the rich” (Karen Reissman, health campaigner and Socialist Workers Party member at the rally in Manchester). They know perfectly well that the shadow chancellor, a former postman, sees the need for cuts, and that until 6 months ago a Labour government, including trade union sponsored MPs, was imposing them. The leaflets handed out at the London demo could even remind us of this – but only in order to try and draw us back into the an alternative version of the same old policies behind the unions or some alternative electoral bloc (eg the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition).

After all the radical talk of joint action at the TUC this year, the focus of its campaign about the cuts is a demonstration at the end of March next year. So the message we hear is “We should bombard the TUC and trade union leaders with demands for action now” (according to the National Shop Stewards Network), “Push trade union leaders into calling local and national strikes” (Socialist Worker online). In the first place, if we have to do all this bombarding and demanding and pushing on the TUC and trade union leaders, it does raise the question of why we need them in the first place – after all plenty of workers have gone into struggle without any union support from China and Bangladesh, to workers at Vestas on the Isle of Wight who occupied the factory without belonging to a union in the first place.

The reality is that the unions are not just useless at organising struggles; it is not just a question of their “lethargy” as the South London SolFed leaflet calls it, they actually divide us. For instance keeping BA cabin crew and BAA workers apart even when they were struggling at the same time. The London demonstration was another example of where the unions really stand. Called by the RMT, FBU and UCU, all of which have ongoing disputes, it only attracted 2,000 people, less than a tenth of the number in Edinburgh. Clearly the unions did not mobilise their members, afraid of what might happen if striking workers got together on the streets. This is how we understand Bob Crow’s call for the TUC to move quickly to organise mass action against the cuts – as a way to prevent workers taking the struggle into their own hands.

The Radical Workers’ Block attracted between 50 and 100 people according to the estimates on libcom, demonstrating that a minority in the working class is putting the unions in question, even here where they are traditionally so strong. Efforts to make its distinctive voice heard included a megaphone, leaflets and press of those on the Bloc, although this was difficult given the myriad of competing union, Trotskyist and anti-cuts groups. At the end a comrade from the ICC discussed with one from the Anarchist Federation whether the Bloc should attempt to speak, concluding it should – next time. Next time too we can learn from the example of the recent struggles in France where internationalist anarchists and left communists worked together to call meetings at the end of demonstrations where instead of listening to union speeches the real issues of the struggle were discussed. As Solfed say “We can’t put our faith in anything other than our solidarity and ability to organise”.

Alex, 5/11/10.

On February 17, 2010, Defense Secretary Robert Gates approved in a memo to Central Command head David Petraeus the rebranding of the American mission in Iraq. He stressed that ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom,’ the US Military’s name for the 2003 invasion and seven-year occupation of that country, “has ended and our forces are operating under a new mission.” Six months later, on August 19, the last American ‘combat’ brigades crossed the Iraqi border into Kuwait, and twelve days after that―over seven years after President Bush made a similar announcement―President Obama announced “the end of our combat mission in Iraq.” As communists, we have a threefold responsibility to take up in response to this maneuver by the American bourgeoisie. First, we must relate this event to a broader analysis of the international situation. Second, we must examine the real intentions of the US bourgeoisie, the impression this announcement is meant to make in and outside the United States. Finally, a balance sheet for the war must be drawn up, both in terms of its effect on American imperialism, and in terms of how the proletariat has learned to respond to war.

US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era

The early years of the Iraq occupation were difficult ones for the American bourgeoisie. While the initial invasion showcased the ability of the American military to destroy its target state the American bourgeoisie’s real strategic objectives were not immediately accomplished. In the 1991 Gulf War, the American bourgeoisie’s main concern was to reinforce its control over an imperialist bloc whose secondary members had lost their reason for adhering to the US overlord following the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the reduced threat posed by Russia. Back then it was largely successful, drawing not only the NATO countries into the military intervention, but including even the collapsing USSR in the effort, via the UN sanctions. The following decade saw the strengthening of the tendency of ‘every man for himself’ at the level of imperialist tensions, with second and third rate powers increasingly emboldened to defend their own interests (ex-Yugoslavia, Middle East, Africa). The aim of the US in 1991 was thus to establish military control of strategically important zones in Asia and the Middle East that could be used to exert pressure on its rivals, large and small.

The 9/11 attacks provided an opportunity to launch the ‘war on terror’ and justify the first foray into Afghanistan in 2001, but the impetus didn’t last long. In 2003, the US was unable to mobilize its old coalition for the second effort in Iraq. France and Germany, in particular, while unable to marshal their own imperialist bloc, proved unwilling to simply follow the US, seeing the ‘war on terror’ precisely for what it was – an attempt by the US to reinforce its position as the dominant global superpower.

Real intentions of the US withdrawal from Iraq

In 2007 there was a noticeable shift in US strategy in Iraq in the face of several difficulties. First was a bloody counter-insurgency that eventually saw 4,400 US troops killed, 36,000 injured and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead (though some estimates put the figure at more than half a million – far above the ‘tens of thousands’ mentioned in the mainstream media). The war in Iraq was becoming a veritable quagmire and the mother of all PR disasters, given the non-existence of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ used to justify the invasion. The ghost of Vietnam stalked the corridors of Washington. There was also the growing cost of the war: even Obama admits it has cost over a trillion dollars, contributing massively to the budget deficit and hampering the US economy’s ability to deal with the economic crisis. The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan – expelled by US force in 2001, but not defeated – and the spread of terrorist attacks in Europe and Asia backed by elements based in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region was another concern.

When Kerry, who focused on reassembling the old imperialist bloc, proved unelectable, America claimed supremacy in the region for itself. The bourgeoisie adopted this strategy, and its debate began to center around the troop numbers appropriate to such a goal. Rumsfeld clung to his project of a leaner, more automated military. The Democrats allied with certain elements on the right to support the ‘surge’ – a temporary deployment of more troops to Iraq to keep order, defend the fledgling ‘democracy’ and ensure the transition of military responsibility to Iraqi forces. This was the policy of Bush in his last years, and it is now the policy of Obama in Afghanistan.

The overall strategy adopted by the US bourgeoisie has remained essentially the same. While the Obama administration may put more emphasis on diplomacy, there is overall continuity with the previous administration. As Obama said in his speech of August 31, “...one of the lessons of our effort in Iraq is that American influence around the world is not a function of military force alone. We must use all elements of our power ― including our diplomacy, our economic strength, and the power of America’s example ― to secure our interests and stand by our allies... [T]he United States of America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership in this young century...”

Balance sheet of the war in Iraq

Does the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq mean the world is now a safer place? Far from it! Defense Secretary Bob Gates was even more explicit than Obama: “Even with the end of the formal combat mission, the U.S. military will continue to support the Iraqi army and police, help to develop Iraq’s navy and air force, and assist with counterterrorism operations.”

Publically, the administration says it is broadly satisfied with the state of government and civil society in Iraq. However, Iraq now holds the record for the amount of time a modern nation state has gone without an effective government. The US still has to strengthen the Iraqi state by training more military and police. It is leaving fifty thousand ‘non-combat’ troops in Iraq for at least another year. These forces will allow it unrivalled domination over the Iraqi government - no other power has such a large force so near the centers of Iraqi power, or one that is so necessary for that power’s continued existence. There are similarities with the US approach in South Korea after World War 2, where 40,000 troops were stationed to maintain a presence in the region. Having military bases in modern-day Iraq – even on a much reduced scale – will ensure the US can maintain pressure on Iran and other regional powers.

We should be careful not to take the administration’s line too much at face value. In actual fact it is quite possible that Iraq will disintegrate when the US leaves, with all the different parties contributing to the break-up of the country, notably the Kurdish nationalists, or with it simply disintegrating into civil war. Similarly, the situation in Afghanistan is absolutely catastrophic and shows every sign of getting worse, with the disintegration of Pakistan and the war spreading there as well.

Despite its setbacks, the American bourgeoisie, has at least internalized the fact that it exists in a world of each against all, and has learned some valuable lessons on how to wage war and conduct occupation today. The withdrawal of troops from Iraq does not mean the end of war. On the one hand, American troops will have a continuing presence in the country, and the United States, Turkey, Israel, Russia, Iran, and Germany will go on playing their games for imperial influence in the region just as before. On the other, the US will now be more able to focus its efforts on Afghanistan, and will have freed up some capacity to intervene elsewhere in the world. The end of the Iraq War, in the hands of imperialism, is really the continuation of war where it is already raging, and the beginning of war elsewhere. Imperialism’s logical end is the destruction of humanity. In the face of this, humanity’s defender is the proletariat, the bearer of communism.

RW, 1/10/10

September 26th marked the end of 10 month Israeli moratorium on West Bank settlements. Since that date the media has reported anywhere between 540 & 600 new houses in the process of being built on the Palestinian West Bank by Israeli settlers. This will inevitably increase tensions between Israel the Palestinians and damage the US led peace talks.

The Palestinian authority is opposed to all the Gaza settlements and has threatened to leave the peace talks if the moratorium is not continued. At the time of writing the Palestinians have left the talks and they won’t return unless the Israelis agree to freeze future settlements.

The Israelis meanwhile are playing down the impact of the Jewish settlements, saying that the peace settlement is the most important thing. But the Israelis have made the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state a precondition for any freeze on Jewish settlements. This is guaranteed to stall any peace talks. Israel also wants a demilitarised Palestine as pre-condition.

Meanwhile in Umm al-Fahm, an Israeli Arab town, the Israeli authorities allowed a march of the right wing Israeli nationalist group, Kach. The march was heavily protected by the police who fired tear gas and stun grenades at the Arab protesters, who were hurling stones at the demonstration.

The US has only just got the two parties back to the negotiation table after 20 months. After the election of Obama the US bourgeoisie re-orientated its foreign policy towards the Middle East. It recognised that it couldn’t afford to fight big conflicts on several fronts and ignore international opinion. One of the biggest barriers is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The US decided to go against its previous unconditional support for Israel and push more strongly for the creation of a Palestinian state. The USA’s plans took a blow with the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister.   

The US has been weakened by its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The decline in power of the US is shown in Israel’s unwillingness to fall into line with US plans.

Hugin, 1/11/10.

Below is a brief chronology of the events and different stages in the movement against pension reform which has developed in France over the past few months[1]. We will add updates as and when new they occur.

This movement is already rich in lessons for the proletariat. In the face of the lies of state’s propagandists, the French media and the international press, the following testimonies and details about the struggle should be disseminated as widely as possible, here as in all countries. We encourage our readers to complete the timeline below (at the moment very fragmented and incomplete) using our discussion forum. We will strive, to the extent of our forces, to translate these texts into the other main languages.

March 23rd

The ‘Intersyndicale’, which includes almost all the French unions - from those most openly 'collaborationist' with the government, to the so-called 'radical' - calls for a first Day of Action.

800 000[2] protesters took to the streets. The atmosphere is rather subdued, resignation dominates. It must be said that the pension reform has been prepared for months and even years in advance. Politicians, the media, “experts” of all kinds have been saying that reform was in effect necessary and unavoidable, that the very survival of "welfare state" and “the balance of the national budget” were at stake. Besides, the watchword of the unions is not “withdrawal of the attack on pensions” but “planned reform”. They call for “more negotiations,” for the trade unions and state to find reform that is “more just, more humane.”

In short, the State, Employers, and Unions all say that the sacrifice is “a sad necessity.” In the face of this juggernaut, discontent is great but heads are bowed.

May 26th

It’s Groundhog Day. The unions call a second Day of Action under the same terms and slogans. There is a slight increase in participation (1 million) but the atmosphere is still marked by desperation.

June 24th

The unions believe they are giving the movement the coup de grace. A third Day of Action is announced. Given the relatively bleak atmosphere of the previous two, with the third taking place a day before the holidays, this one should be a “protest funeral.” The machinery is well oiled. A Day of Action on the same scale as the previous means that “the game is over”. With two months of summer holidays ahead, the goal is to scatter any remaining crumbs of hope of the struggle developing. The unions had certainly prepared their speeches well: "We tried, but the workers don’t have the stomach for a fight”. Discouragement is guaranteed!

This technique has been used many times in the past, often with success. But... wham! June 24th, 2 million workers, unemployed and temps in the streets!

Besides the greater scale, the atmosphere also changes: anger, frustration. Since the acceleration of the crisis in 2008, poverty and injustice continue to grow. Pension reform has become the symbol of a sharp deterioration in living conditions.

July-August

The June Day of Action has pumped up the proletariat’s morale. The idea that a more powerful struggle is possible begins to gain ground. The unions also evidently feel the winds of change. They know that the question "How can we fight?" is running through people’s heads. So they decide to immediately occupy the ground and minds, there is no question that the workers themselves begin to think and act for themselves, outside the control of the unions. So next day they announce another Day of Action for the autumn. To ensure any "independent thinking" is nipped in the bud, they fly airplanes over the beaches pulling advertising banners calling for the demonstration on Tuesday September 7th!

But another event, in fact quite trivial, is feeding the workers' anger over the summer: the “Woerth Affair”. There is collusion between the politicians currently in power (notably Nicolas Sarkozy and Éric Woerth) and one of French capital’s richest heiresses, Ms Betancourt, boss of L'Oreal, a background of tax evasion and all kinds of illegal arrangements. However, Eric Woerth is none other than the Minister in charge of pension reform! The feeling of injustice is total: the working class must tighten their belts while the rich and powerful manage “their small affairs.”

September 7th

From the outset the Day of Action looks well attended. However, this is the first time one is organized so early in the school year. Even before September 7th, recognizing the extent of discontent within the ranks of the proletariat, the unions promised to organize another one without waiting for a Saturday so that “everyone can participate.”

The day arrives: 2.7 million demonstrators. With the summer hiatus over, the return looks hot and starts where it left off. Calls for renewed strikes begin to bloom. Given the scale of the mobilization, the unions react immediately: the demonstration on Saturday is cancelled, precluding the possibility of a renewed strike, until September 23rd... 15 days away! The aim is to break the momentum, to waste time. This “sense of responsibility” by the unions is hailed by the highest representatives of the French state.

September 23rd

3 million protesters in the streets! The movement then swells again. For the first time, processions are reluctant to disperse. Rather, in many cities, a few dozen people over here, a few hundred here and there, are discussing at the end of the event. Union leaflets begin to call for the control of struggles by the workers themselves[3]. In some cities, the CNT-AIT organizes “Popular Assemblies” for “free speech” (and the ICC joins this excellent initiative.) From that moment, these street assemblies begin to have some success, managing to gather each week several dozen participants, including in Toulouse[4].

This willingness of minorities to self-organize reveal that the whole class begins to ask questions about the unions’ strategy, not for one moment to think about the consequences of their doubts and questions.

October 2nd

The first Day of Action held on a Saturday. There is no real trend in the number of participants. But the 3 million protesters found themselves side by side with “man on the street”, workers' families and the public who cannot usually go on strike. Several attempts to arrange meetings at the end of street demonstrations fail:

• In Paris, a leaflet distributed by the inter-profession Turbin (named after their email, [email protected] [178], which is also slang for hard labour) calling all to rally under its banners - "The best retirement is a good offense" and "Take our struggles in hand”), under a gazebo at the start of the procession. Evidence that this appeal has circulated is clear: at the meeting point you will be physically met by dozens of police officers... with a camera! Without a suitable place to conduct a discussion, the meeting may not be held, but those present decided to continue anyway. Fifty people congregate together and leave their old banners. In an hour, nearly 300.
• In Tours, the committee "for the extension of the struggle" leaflets calling for "keeping the streets."
• In Lyon, a few dozen protesters expressed their wish not to leave immediately, to remain there to discuss, meeting on the street, and to reflect collectively on how to continue and expand the movement. But the sound systems of the CGT (the main French trade union) are ultimately fatal to their initiative: the deafening noise prevents any real debate.

These failed attempts to express both the efforts of our class to take control of their struggles and the difficulties that still exist in the current period are mainly due to their own lack of self-confidence, which inhibits the exploited.

By contrast, in Toulouse, popular assemblies continue to be held. The initiative follows the same pattern as the CNT-AIT and the ICC. At the end of the demonstration a banner is planted at the assembly point that reads "Employed, unemployed, students, retirees: TAKE THE STRUGGLES INTO OUR HANDS!" and a street meeting is organized below them. This debate brings together a few dozen people.

October 12th

The new Day of Action brings together 3.5 million people in struggle! A record!

More importantly, the atmosphere is relatively vibrant. General Assemblies begin to multiply, with several dozen taking place across the whole of France. Each time they gather each between 100 and 200 participants. The policy of the unions is to increasingly openly criticize many of these leaflets, even claiming that they lead us voluntarily to defeat.[5] The evidence of this dynamic, in Toulouse, in addition to the Popular Assemblies organized by the CNT AIT (and to a lesser extent, the ICC), is a call made to hold a street meeting every day outside the Labour Exchange at 6pm [which continues to meet again today, 20th October] and initiate appeals by leaflets.

The majority of the unions finally decide to continue the strike. Given this marathon (the movement began seven months ago!), and the many strikes held by workers during the previous Days of Action, this renewal of the strike comes very late. Workers' wages are already hit hard. In any case, the unions have made a calculation. Yet this movement, too, will be relatively well attended.

Among teachers and railway workers in the Paris region, many unions organize general assemblies. Division and sabotage are held up to ridicule. At the train station, the union GA are organized by sector (drivers on one side, guards on the other, the administration again in another corner). In some hospitals, each floor has its own GA! Moreover, they are definitely not sovereign. For example, at Gare de l'Est in Paris, while the continuation of the strike must be voted on Thursday morning at 2pm, the union bureaucracy have their vote on the preceding Wednesday. This strategy has a double effect:

• Emptying the GA of its relevance: staff do not attend because everything is already decided;
• It also allows the media to present the votes of the GA in favour of continuing the strike as the result of an extreme minority, in order to make them unpopular.

Moreover, the unions can play their strongest card: paralyze transport. From October 12th, fewer trains are running, more refineries are blocked, raising the spectre of fuel shortages of gasoline. This creates tension within the working class and pushes those who want (need) to work against the strikers.

October 16th

The second Day of Action on a Saturday. Once again, nearly 3 million people find themselves pounding the pavement.

A new dimension emerges: school children, who entered the struggle a few days earlier, point the tips of their noses in the demonstrations.

The following Monday, nearly 1,000 schools are blockaded and many spontaneous protests by school children take place. The UNL, the main student (and non-student) union, which started the movement, acknowledges that it’s overwhelmed by the scale of the mobilization.

The state exploits the presence of young thugs within the students’ ranks to violently repress certain “blockaders” and young demonstrators (a 17-year-old nearly loses an eye after police fire a Flash-Ball in the Montreuil suburb of Paris). The police themselves fan the anger at “police provocation”. The goal is clear: to derail the movement by dragging it into the mire of mindless violence and a sterile confrontation with the cops. By the same token, the state is seeking at all costs to make the struggle unpopular, to scare young people, their parents and the whole working class.

October 18th

The students, who were at the heart of the victorious movement against the CPE in 2006, seem to be getting into the dance. Some schools (in Paris, Rennes and Toulouse in particular) have announced they are blockaded, but so far they have remained in the minority.

October 19th

The threat to blockade the refineries, which soared after October 12th, is effectively implemented. The troops of the CGT union cripple many sites, on the order of their union, without even a decision made in a General Assembly. Very soon there are fuel shortages at between 1,000 and 2,000 petrol stations.

The mobilization also grows at the train stations. More and more trains are cancelled.

Despite transportation being paralysed, the movement didn’t become unpopular. Even the media, usually so good at going on the with “vox pops” where travellers can vent their anger about being stuck in a train station, this time must admit that these travellers are in favour of the movement and fully support the strikers as “they are fighting for everybody.” Some union general assemblies decide to support the refinery blockades and physically support the pickets, which are subject to numerous, sometimes brutal assaults by the police, to “liberate the refineries”, “restore order” and “stop the thugs” (to quote the President, Nicolas Sarkozy).

Despite the fuel shortage and the lack of trains, despite intimidation and repression, 3.5 million protesters are still on the streets on October 19th. This shows the depth of the anger brewing in the ranks of the workers!

Given the scale of this latest mobilization, the state tightens the grip of the baton and the Flash-Ball. In particular, in Lyons, a massive deployment of cops awaits the arrival of the demonstration. Challenged, the police deliberately fan hatred among the young. A handful gives in to this provocation. The crackdown turns into a rampage, cops hitting everything in sight: young people who “look like thugs” or those who just look young, but also the old. The end of the demonstration would have borne the brunt of the “rule of law”. The state certainly felt it had gone too far this time: some ministers led calls for calm (in reality aimed at their own troops). The demonstration in Paris went much “smoother”, as strongly emphasized the media.

To summarize, the movement has swelled for 7 months. Anger is immense. The demands against pension reform tend to be overshadowed: the media recognize that the movement is becoming "politicized." The cause of this is the general misery, insecurity, and exploitation, etc... which is being openly rejected. Solidarity between different sectors also increases. But for the moment, the working class fails to really take control of its struggles. It wants more, it tries to here and there. It’s increasingly wary of the unions, but it still fails to really organize collectively through sovereign and autonomous general assemblies, and therefore outside the unions. This is why such assemblies formed the heart of the movement against the CPE in 2006 and gave it its strength. The working class still seems to lack self-confidence. The future course of the struggle will tell us whether it can overcome this difficulty. If not now, then next time! This movement holds great promise for future struggles.

To be continued…

ICC, 22/10/10.

“There were millions of us protesting and on strike in the recent Days of Action. The government has not yet backed down. Only a mass movement can make them do this. This idea made its way into the discussions on an indefinite, general, renewable strike, bringing the economy to its knees...

“If today they ride the horse of renewed strikes, it’s to avoid losing control of our struggles, which they use as a bargaining chip to ensure they’re at the negotiating table... Why? Because, as is written in the letter signed by the seven unions of the CFTC to the SUD-Solidaire union, they want ensure that “the trade unions’ point of view on a set of fair and effective measures to ensure the sustainability of the pension system” is heard. Can anyone believe, for one moment, that there can possibly be a deal with those who have wrecked our pensions since 1993, with those who began the systematic demolition of our living and working conditions?

“The only force capable of making the government and the ruling classes back down is the unity of public and private sector workers, of the unemployed, pensioners and youth, of the illegal immigrants, of the unionised or non-unionised, based in common general assemblies where we can control the struggles ourselves.”

These quotes are taken from a leaflet circulated widely during demonstrations in Paris and signed by “workers and temps of the Inter-professional General Assembly at Gare de l'Est”[2].

Many other appeals with a similar meaning and tone are coming from other inter-professional general assemblies, struggle committees or small political organizations, emphasising their growing distrust of the unions, as we watch them lead us to defeat. All encourage the workers to take control of their own struggles.

Behind the Unions, the union struggle is questioned

In fact, the sabotage of the struggle by the unions in 2003, 2007 and now in 2010 raises the broader question of the true nature of the unions. Are they still in the camp of the working class? A brief overview of the struggles of recent decades shows that they have indeed passed into the camp of the bourgeoisie.

For over 100 years, the only major struggles were wildcat strikes, spontaneous and on a mass scale. And all these struggles have seen the same basis for organisation, not the union form, but mass meetings, where all workers discuss their own struggles and the problems that have to be solved, with elected and revocable committees to centralise the fight. The great strike in May 1968 in France was triggered despite the unions. In Italy, during the strikes of the Hot Autumn of 1969, workers drove the union representatives from strike meetings. In 1973, the Antwerp Dockers’ strike attacked the local unions. In the 1970s, workers in England often bullied the unions. The same thing happened in France in 1979 during the Longwy Denain strike in Dunkirk.

In August 1980, in Poland, the workers rejected the unions (which were formally part of the state) and organised a mass strike through general meetings and committees made up of elected and revocable delegates (the MKS). Microphones and PA systems were used during negotiations with state officials so that all workers could follow them, intervene and control the delegates. Of course, we can’t forget how this particular strike ended: with the illusion of a new union, free, independent and combative to which the working class could entrust the struggle’s reins. The result was immediate. This new union, “all shiny and new”, called Solidarity, cut the microphones and entered into secret negotiations with the Polish state and, together with them, orchestrated the dispersal, division and, ultimately, violent defeat of the working class!

Following the unions is always going to lead to defeat. To develop a massive struggle, animated by workers’ solidarity, it is necessary to take control.

“The emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves.”

ICC (22 October, 2010)

A living movement of struggle follows many twists and turns. Flying pickets, barricades, blockades occupations, leafleting, spontaneous demonstrations, etc., are familiar expressions of class action, and we can expect the working class to conjure up others in its future combats. But at the heart of every struggle there is unavoidably the general assembly or mass meeting. It’s where we can discuss, debate, and agree together the way forward. The assembly/ mass meeting is THE place where the workers’ struggle can be discussed openly and decisions can be reached collectively. And it’s for this reason that there is always a great risk of all kinds of sabotage.

The banner reads: “still teaching at 67?”. Workers in France, as elsewhere, are being asked to work many more years before getting a pension

The assemblies, lungs of workers’ struggle

When the struggle is not active, the unions hold many humdrum meetings of their own. They are all very much the same. Firms all allocate time for union meetings which are conducted by the ‘officials’ who discuss among themselves with a few rank and file unionists or non-unionists as on-lookers who get asked their opinion from time to time. Not surprisingly, these meetings attract few people. Most workers have no interest to them.

When the struggle breaks out, like it has recently, the unions adapt and play a different game:
• Insofar as they can, they restrict discussion to as few people as possible. Either they do nothing at all or they sneakily keep publicity to a minimum.
• Sometimes, the anger in the proletarian ranks boils over. Then, to avoid the appearance of impromptu meetings and discussions outside their control, the unions call an array of meetings. But these meetings are organised sector by sector, plant by plant, trade by trade ... And in this way the unions orchestrate divisions, carve things up, disperse and dissipate energies, instead of strengthening and unifying class forces. Currently, on the railways, there are specific meetings for the train crews, the station staff and the office workers ... In some hospitals in the Toulouse region, the sabotage borders on the ridiculous: each floor has separate meetings!
• The unions will resort to all sorts of dirty tricks to keep control of these meetings. At the Gare de l’Est in Paris, a mass meeting was scheduled for Thursday, October 14th, in the morning. The railway workers were faced with deciding collectively whether to continue the strike or not. But eventually, the union officials revealed they had decided this vote amongst themselves the day before, Wednesday 13th. There was no reason to attend en masse for the assembly on the Thursday because the decision was already taken. And indeed, hardly anyone was present on that day. That’s how to kill the collective life of the working class in its struggles! That is union sabotage according to the rule book!

In its article “What is a general assembly?”, the CNT-AIT of Gers (Sia32.lautre.net) very correctly describes many other “dangers for the general assemblies”:
• “Monopolising debate: the assembly is not democratic. The classic case is that of the union official appointing himself to the role of chairman, participating in the discussions by answering back or systematically giving his opinion. [...]
• Undemocratic practices of the assembly: votes are not respected. Agendas are manipulated and votes are called for on several occasions when decisions have already been taken, exhausting everyone in the process. Often, at the end of meetings there are conclusions that destroy the coherence and forwards dynamic.
• Neutralising the assembly: no matter how rich the meetings have been, there is no capacity to build on what has been achieved because no follow-up meetings are arranged. Often the assembly of striking workers is made to look like an echo chamber for workers to register their anger, which nullifies their revolt by transforming their desire for direct action into so many empty words.”

Real workers’ assemblies must be the exact opposite

They must immediately break with all sectoral or corporatist divisions. They should be open not only to every employee, no matter what category they fall into, but also, and especially, to workers from other firms, to the retired, to temporary and unemployed workers, to college and high school students... to all those who want to participate in the extension of the movement and ask themselves “How do we fight back?”. And again, as the anarcho-syndicalist organisation from Gers writes:

“The Assembly is democratic, and therefore guarantees everyone an equal chance to speak in the time slots and space provided for the different discussion topics. This chance to speak is guaranteed under a mandate entrusted to the Chair. [...]
• The Assembly takes decisions, and these decisions take place by a show of hands [...].
• The Assembly is durable, its details recorded by a secretary appointed when the meeting starts who is responsible for recording and distributing the debate details and decisions of the Assembly. It also plans the date and place of the next Assembly.”

These last points are crucial. An Assembly is really not just an “echo chamber for workers to register their anger.” It is much more. Obviously this is a place for speaking, in fact it is one of the only places where workers can really express themselves. But the Assembly is also the place where the working class can unite:
• This is where our class can take collective decisions. It is therefore essential that holding such a meeting takes place through the adoption (voted by show of hands) of written texts and eventual actions.
• This is where it can decide upon and organise the extension of the struggle, by going itself or by sending massive delegations to places (factories, office blocks, hospitals ...) where it can call on workers’ who are the closest geographically and the most combative to join them in the struggle.
• And this is how coordination between the different sites and sectors in the struggle is built. Indeed there must be coordination between the general assemblies by their own committees, by elected delegates, fully answerable to them and therefore revocable at any time.

The current attacks on pensions have demonstrated the depth of the workers’ anger, the scale of unrest, their determination and ability to mobilise en masse. But our class has not yet managed at the current time to actually organise itself collectively in the struggle with sovereign and autonomous assemblies. This is the prime weakness of this struggle. This is the step the proletariat must of necessity take in the future if it is going to take proper control of its struggles and demonstrate its unity and solidarity against capital.

ICC, 22/10/10.

Since the early 1980s and the first Anarchist Bookfair in London, the event has gradually got larger, with bigger venues, more stalls and more meetings. In the early years there was an anarchist hardcore, but, as time has gone on, an increasing variety of meetings has attracted people from all sorts of political backgrounds. It’s true that there are familiar faces who seem to be there every year, but the new faces have not just come along to see the ‘big stars’ – this year John Pilger and Paul Mason were in the line-up – but to seek out ideas that might be alternatives to the political mainstream.

Of course, there is no such thing as a homogenised anarchism. There are many varieties of ideas in anarchism and on its fringes. Some defend internationalist positions, some recognise an important role for the working class, some are anarcho-syndicalists, some are abstract advocates of freedom, and some are not very different from Trotskyists and other forms of leftism that anarchists profess to despise.

Every year the militants of the ICC participate in a number of meetings at the Bookfair. It’s not always obvious which ones will provoke productive discussion, and the imposition of 50 minute limits for many meetings means there’s often little opportunity for discussion to develop. What follows are some of the more positive features of this year’s Anarchist Bookfair.

Among the regular events in recent years have been the meetings of the Radical Anthropology Group. This year they held a meeting on ‘Primitive communism and its contemporary relevance’. For most of the 100,000 or so years human being have been around they have lived neither in groups under a dominant alpha male like most of the great apes, nor in class societies. Human nature is clearly not the unchanging dog-eat-dog affair that characterises so much of life in capitalist society.

Chris Knight’s anthropology studies look at how we evolved, at the human revolution that led to egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies without state or private property. His talk and the discussion that followed raised many important questions about what it means to be human; about the relations between the sexes; and about the relation of theory to discovery in science – in this case Chris Knight’s prediction of the finding of red ochre for body decoration in the earliest human habitations about 100,000 years ago.

These are very interesting and important topics for the revolutionary class that can put an end to class society, some of which we responded to in a review of Knight’s Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture [25].

In another meeting that involved Chris Knight there was a debate on ideas developed in an article on Chomsky that first appeared in 2002. Noam Chomsky is a contradictory figure. On one hand he calls himself an anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist; on the the other hand his approach to linguistics, and the so-called ‘cognitive revolution’ seems to mean turning his back on the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, turning attention from collective, social activity to individuals and parts of individuals. Chomsky sees language at ‘an individual phenomenon’ in contrast to the earlier view of language as ‘a social phenomenon, a shared property of a community’. If Chomsky’s approach to language lacks a sense of humanity, his politics lack a scientific approach.

The official title of the meeting was “Noam Chomsky: Does the anarchist revolution need science?” This was only partly touched on when peace campaigner Milan Rai answered the question “Do we need a scientifically grounded theory for revolution?” with a firm No. He was not against rational enquiry, or a concern for evidence, logic and consistency – but would take this concern no further.

A militant of the ICC defended the importance of theory and a scientific approach. If it’s productive to have a scientific approach toward everything from galaxies to sub-atomic particles, then an understanding of the underlying principles of capitalism or the potential of the working class surely gains from a commitment to drawing out the most profound theoretical conclusions. Yes, all ideas for the emancipation of humanity will be tested in the laboratory of revolution, but they benefit enormously from a serious attempt to scientifically grasp, for instance, the characteristics of previous struggles.

One of the most interesting groups to have participated in struggles in Greece over the last couple of years is TPTG (some of whose analyses we have published in our press). In a well organised meeting that allowed time for discussion they described events at first hand along with some of the ideas that have emerged. They warned of the glorification of violence, which could be a problem in the long run. They showed how left-wing nationalism presented the debt crisis as a national crisis, a national catastrophe, and how leftist ideology defended nationalisation and self-management while blaming corrupt politicians and calling for economic re-organisation.

It was interesting to contrast the movement of December 2008 with March/April 2010. The strikes and demonstrations this year were all called, organised and determined by the unions without any grass roots initiatives. Union control fragmented and sabotaged the movement.

In the December movement they had mixed feelings about the move from the streets to the occupations and the assemblies. They thought something had been lost. A militant of the ICC intervened to point to what was positive in December with the discussions that took place in the assemblies and occupations. For the TPTG there were positive and negative aspects of the assemblies. They thought that it was necessary to see how discussion developed, but it was important not to glorify the assemblies.

A meeting entitled “Will Cameron’s cuts lead to working class defeat or to a new anti-capitalist movement?” started with some celebrity speakers. Once these were over the discussion evolved in a way that allowed everyone to participate and to address the meeting as a whole, very much assisted by the chairing of the meeting. Few interventions were directed specifically to the presenters, rather speaking to the meeting as a whole.

The ICC spoke to take issue with the idea that the government’s cuts were ‘ideological’ and pointed to the underlying reality of the crisis.

We agreed with a comrade who said that the most important issue for the working class was to take an internationalist position. We said that it was important to take note of the strikes in France, for example. These struggles showed that the working class in Britain did not have to confront the crisis alone. We also noted that the crisis is just as real in China as it is in Europe or the US, so that workers there share the same experience as the working class elsewhere and fight on the same basis.

The Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society gave a talk entitled ‘Freedom: a bourgeois concept or a weapon of criticism?’ The discussion wasn’t helped by people still arriving 30 minutes into a 50 minute discussion, and by the chair inviting people to interrupt or raise questions as they went along. Nonetheless, some interesting points were raised about the concept of ‘freedom’ as one reason why some people look for an alternative perspective.

The general view of the presenter was that ‘freedom’ – of speech, the right to criticise etc - is a concept which is perfectly compatible with the liberal form of capitalism, giving the example that ‘the people’ are actively encouraged to criticise and, as citizens, suggest improvements to the functioning of society. The ICC indicated our general agreement with this – even the fact that there is a place in the capital of Britain where anarchists, communists and those seeking alternatives can meet annually without facing harassment from the state is in itself indicative of the flexibility of the most advanced countries to tolerate certain levels of criticism. The W&CAS have interesting views, and made reference to Capital and arguments used by Marx in their presentation; however there was no mention of the working class as a force within society, or its perspective as the gravedigger of all forms of capitalism. Perhaps it will be possible to raise these points, and others, at future meetings.

 The usually accepted explanations for the current state of society are increasingly undermined by people’s experience of a decomposing, crisis-ridden capitalism. When the dominant ideas fail to convince, discussion of alternative views can be productive. Being convinced of the need for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism does not come overnight; it requires a whole process of open discussion.... wherever it can be found.

Barrow 6/11/10.

From Revolución Mundial No. 118 [182], the ICC’s publication in Mexico

The growth of the political and economic power of drug gangs in Mexico has led the US bourgeoisie to express concern about the possibility of “contagion”, leading it to put pressure on the Mexican government. James Mattis of the US Navy stated in February 2009 that Mexico is a “failed state.” According to the US military there are similarities between Mexico and Pakistan, these states are losing control of their political and economic apparatus: in Mexico because of drugs, in Pakistan because of the tensions with India and the continued attacks by the Taliban.

This argument reveals that there certainly is a greater involvement of the mafia in the life of the bourgeoisie, but the denunciation mystifies reality, making it harder to see that the state is an instrument of the ruling class which synthesizes the interests of all factions of the bourgeoisie. These interests include those of the mafia. Their interests and practices have become unified, the ‘lawful’ activities of the state have become mixed and confused with regard to drug trafficking. But at the same time, the gangsterisation of the ruling class encourages and increases the conflicts within the state itself, which undoubtedly makes it difficult for the bourgeoisie to control all the aspects of its political life. However, this doesn’t imply that the state has lost power.

The unity of government and drug traffickers... advancing decomposition

Some commentators have said that the mafia has become a “real power” through its military action, financial corruption and the submission of the judiciary to the drug cartels in effect blocking the action of the State, that these mafia groups now act as a “parallel state.” This idea is consistent only if we stick to the bourgeois definition of the modern state, which is conceived as an institution that ensures compliance with the “social contract”, organises the nation, creating an indivisible unity with its citizens. If you follow this line of argument then the state is a neutral entity, one that, as Weber theorised, has a monopoly of force, but which tries on a “rational-legal” basis to legitimise its power through popular representation. So, if the mafia practices terror, not only through its paramilitary apparatus, but even using the repressive forces of the State, the “accepted” image of the state is weakened and you can be held up as an example of a “failed state”.

But this approach has no basis if we go to the heart of the problem. First it is necessary to have a materialist explanation of the modern state. As Lenin said in State and Revolution, “The state is a machine for one class to suppress another, a machine for subjecting another class...” The state is not a “neutral” structure whose primary function is the protection of its “citizens”. Its primary function is to ensure the rule of capital. If there are internal disputes within the bourgeoisie, with terror being inflicted on the whole population, the state ‘fails’ to fulfil its function, to ensure the control and subjection of the exploited. On the contrary, the actions of the mafia have been cleverly manipulated by the government to intimidate and prevent the working class from struggling. In regions such as Sinaloa, Michoacan and Guerrero, where the workers have a tradition of militancy, the actions of the mafia have - to the delight of the whole bourgeoisie! - intimidated and inhibited mobilisations of discontent.

So, there is no doubt that the presence of the Mafia dominates all aspects of the life of the bourgeoisie, exposing it to fierce in-fighting, tearing apart the political parties and business relationships that make up the government structures... but the question is: where have the internal struggles within the ruling class made it impossible for it to perform its real role? So far, the state still acts with impunity against the working class, even more so, as was stated above, by making it harder for workers to struggle for improvements in their living and working conditions. Assuming otherwise would lead us to forget that drug gangs are not outside the realm of the state, but a part of the ruling class, placed squarely within it.

The mafia and the drug cartels have had an important place in the life of the bourgeoisie for decades. In recent times capitalism has undergone a process of decomposition, characterised by a difficulty of the bourgeoisie to build stable, lasting relationships, which means domestic disputes turn into wars of “each against all”. It’s this weakness that makes it difficult to control the impetuosity of youth gangs. This breakdown of the social fabric within the bourgeoisie, of “gangster” style behaviour, leads to hails of bullets that not only kill other mafiosi and the army (who are in reality cannon fodder) but also civilians who cross their paths (which the government classifies as “collateral damage”), and even those higher up in the bourgeoisie involved in politics. However serious this may seem, it doesn’t call into question the state’s ability to fulfil its primary function: it only demonstrates the difficulty the bourgeoisie has in maintaining order within its ranks.

The gangsterisation of the State

Life in Mexico shows decomposition in the raw, as identified in our ‘Theses on Decomposition’ (published in International Review 62): “it is more and more difficult to distinguish the government apparatus from gangland”.

For the bourgeoisie a drug operation is a business just like any other, and as in every branch of production experiences fierce competition (also accelerated by the worsening of the economic crisis), the only difference being that protection from an opponent requires bloody operations. The existence of the bourgeoisie’s mafia-style practices can be seen in states such as Russia, and although there is a different government, it still finds it difficult to discipline its forces.

In the 60’s and 70’s the ‘fight’ against drug plantations in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca was combined with the pursuit of the guerrillas, so the drug trade was used as a kind of compensation to the military who met resistance head on. In this framework, the drug gangs were placed under the command of governors, such as Raul Caballero Aburto, Ruben Figueroa (both governors of Guerrero between 1957-61 and 1975-81 respectively), or military officers such as Acosta Chaparro. The relationship of the gangs to Figueroa was taken for granted. In the case of Acosta, he was dismissed from the military and jailed for 5 years for working with groups of drug traffickers (and killing 22 people during the “dirty war”). But in 2007 he was freed, exonerated from blame, returned to the ranks, and in 2008 was even given a new award for 45 years of service with “patriotism, loyalty, devotion, dedication and service to Mexico and its institutions.”

In “Operation Condor” (1977-1987), carried out in the “golden triangle” (consisting of the areas of Durango, Sinaloa and Chihuahua), the military operation against drugs also hid persecution of the guerrillas. It was no coincidence that these tasks were designated to General Hernández Toledo (whose troops lead the slaughter of Tlatelolco in 1968). With this type of operation the government can organise the interests that are created around the drug trade, dishing out privileges to the governors and military commanders. A remarkable fact is that since these operations began 10 years ago not a single mafia leader has been stopped. On the contrary, they have been given power to extend their domain to Jalisco.

In earlier decades when there were conflicts within the bourgeoisie they bonded together as a “revolutionary family” (and mostly represented in the PRI), the bourgeoisie had the ability to impose discipline. For example, in 1947 groups around Cárdenas publicly accused General Pablo Macías. However, this is not possible in the current situation, not only because the ruling party is now the PAN, but also because the struggles are also taking place in states governed by the PRI. There is also the risk that struggles will even extend into the federal government, which the fractures in the tissue of the state will widen even further. After all, as the ICC has stated: “Amongst the major characteristics of capitalist society’s decomposition, we should emphasise the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the political situation” (Thesis 9).

In short, it is possible to see that certain powerful groups within the state are linked to a mafia group, collaborating with them if not merging, that allows them to work with impunity. Even if the various actors know which mafia gang is linked to their neighbour or opponent, at least they can live together to a certain extent. The limit is the intersection of interests, so the state has the difficult task of controlling the activity all of them and preventing the explosion of conflicts. In this sense the placement of the military in the first row of the conflict is a demonstration of the position of strength of the group in power, but the army itself is fractured: not even the protection it is afforded to act with impunity ensures its discipline. But while the bourgeoisie has trouble controlling itself, it can still push the most harmful effects of its decomposition onto the workers.

Tatlin, August 2010.

This article is available here [185] to download and distribute.

A whole series of demonstrations up and down the country, strikes by university, Further Education, sixth form and secondary school students, occupations in a long list of universities, numerous meetings to discuss the way forward... the student and pupil revolt against the rise in tuition fees and the abolition of EMA payments is still on the march. Students and those supporting them have come to the demonstrations in high spirits, making their own banners and their own slogans, some of them joining protests for the first time, many of them finding new ways of organising the protests. The strikes, demonstrations and occupations have been anything but the tame events which the trade unions and the ‘official’ left are usually given the job of marshalling. Spontaneous walk-outs, the taking of Tory HQ at Millbank, the defiance or creative avoidance of police lines, the invasion of town halls and other public spaces, are just some expressions of this openly rebellious attitude. And the disgust at the condemnation of the Millbank demonstrators by NUS chief Aaron Porter was so widespread that he has had to make a grovelling apology.

This outpouring of barely-controlled resistance has worried our rulers. A clear sign of this is the level of police repression used against the demonstrations. On 24th November in London, thousands of demonstrators were kettled by the police within minutes of setting off from Trafalgar Square, and despite some successful attempts to break through the police lines, the forces of order detained thousands of them for hours in the cold. At one point mounted police rode directly through the crowd. In Manchester, at Lewisham Town Hall and elsewhere, we have seen similar displays of brute force. The newspapers are playing their usual role as well, printing photographs of alleged ‘wreckers’ after Millbank, running scare stories about revolutionary groups targeting the nation’s youth with their evil propaganda. All this shows the real nature of the 'democracy' we live under.     

The student revolt in the UK is the best answer to the idea that the working class in this country is going to passively put up with the torrent of attacks being launched by the new government (in continuity with the previous government) on every aspect of our living standards: jobs, wages, health, unemployment and disability benefits as well as education. They are a warning to the rulers that a whole new generation of the exploited class does not accept their logic of sacrifice and austerity. In this they are echoing the massive struggles which have shaken Greece, France, and Italy, and which are threatening to explode in Ireland, Portugal and many other countries.

But the capitalist class, facing the deepest economic crisis in its history, is not just going to cave in to our demands. Not ideology, but the very material logic of their dying system compels them to make these attacks. And to force them to make even the most temporary concessions, we have to realise their greatest fear: a working class that is organised, united, and conscious of what it is fighting for.

This is no utopia. It’s already taking shape in front of us. The capacity for self-organisation can be seen in the initiatives of demonstrators on the streets, and the insistence on collective decision-making in occupations and meetings, the rejection of manipulation by would-be bureaucrats, however ‘left wing’ they claim to be. The tendency towards the unification of the working class can be seen when teachers and lecturers, parents, pensioners, workers from other sectors or the unemployed take part in general meetings in the occupied university buildings or join the student demonstrations, when students go to the picket lines of striking tube workers. Consciousness about the goals of the movement can be seen both in the formulation of clear demands for today and in the growing recognition that this society cannot offer us a human future.   

But we also have to discuss how to take these efforts further, because they are just the beginning. In our view – which we think is based on the experience of both past and present struggles of the working class – there are some concrete steps that can be taken right now, even if their exact form may vary from place to place:

·         To keep the struggle under our control, to make sure decisions are made collectively and not imposed from above, we need to organise mass meetings in the schools, college and universities, open to both students and employees. All committees and co-ordinations that speak in the names of these meetings have to be elected and recallable;

·         We need to make direct links between different schools, colleges and universities. Don’t leave it in the hands of the union apparatus or self-appointed leaders;

·         To broaden the movement beyond the education sector, students need to go directly to the employed workers, to the nearest factories, hospitals and offices, calling on them to come to their meetings, to join their occupations and demonstrations, to walk out alongside them and bring their demands into a common fight against austerity and repression.

David Cameron keeps telling us: we are all in it together. And he certainly is in it ‘together’ with his class and its state and its parties, which includes the Labour Party just as much as the Lib Dems and the Tories. All of them are in it to save the capitalist system at our expense. But we are in it together with all those who are exploited and oppressed by this system, in every country of the world. Today we are in it to defend ourselves from being exploited even more. Tomorrow we shall be in it to end exploitation altogether.

ICC, 2/12/10.

The tactic of occupying university buildings has been very widespread throughout the present mobilisation against education fees and cuts. Although they have often involved a determined minority rather than the whole body of staff and students, and without claiming that they have yet achieved a real autonomy from the NUS or the activist networks on its left wing, we would argue that the occupations are still infused with the same proletarian spirit that animates the revolt as a whole. This can be seen in two key aspects: the demands they have raised, and their efforts to apply methods of debate and decision making that reflect the need for workers to control their own struggles.

The demands that the occupations have put forward are not limited to the interests of university students but correspond to wider needs within the working class. A good example is the list of demands agreed by the occupiers at the University of East London:

“1) We demand that the university pledge not to introduce tuition fee increases.
2) The university pledge not to implement cuts, no staff redundancies or wage reduction.
3) The London living wage must be immediately implemented for all staff including contracted workers.
4) We demand that the Vice Chancellor issues a statement against fees and cuts as well as pressurising other members of the Million Plus group to do the same.
5) There must be absolutely no victimisation or disciplinary action taken against any of the students, staff and representatives involved in this occupation”.

At University College London, the occupation made similar demands, including for an increase in the wages of the cleaning, catering and security staff employed by the university. 

At the occupied part of the School of Oriental and African Studies on 2 December, a general meeting rejected the university’s statement aimed at resolving the situation, not only because it didn’t clearly oppose rises in tuition fees, but also because it made no mention of the abolition of Education Maintenance Allowance, an issue for hundreds of thousands of post-16 students.  

The SOAS meeting is also a good example of the attempt to turn the occupations into a focus for real general assemblies that are open to all and which have the capacity to vote after a serious discussion. The meeting was attended by a much larger number of students and staff than are usually present at the occupation, and yet it took the decision to continue with the occupation in the face of threats from the university authorities.

The Edinburgh University occupation, which had a strong anarchist presence, was rather more explicit in its support for real decision-making and action ‘from below’: it described itself as “non-hierarchical” and “entirely leaderless” and affirmed that the strength of the occupations up and down the country was that they had been carried out without relying on leaders or student unions. We may disagree with the alternative being advocated in this statement – a kind of chaotic “swarm” without any attempt to centralise from the bottom up – but these ideas do express a rejection of the kind of premature and manipulative ‘centralisation’ that the leftists are always trying to impose on social movements (See ‘On our chaotic swarm - Edinburgh University Occupation’, libcom.org).

These are just a few examples and this particular movement is very much at the beginning. But they raise real questions about how in the future we can expect to see a truly unified class movement – raising demands that unify rather than divide, and finding forms of organisation that allow authentic discussion and decision-making to the widest possible number of proletarians.  

Amos 4/12/10.

As any reader of the Daily Mail will know there was “at least one” member of the ICC in at least one meeting of the Education Activist Network in London. But contrary to hysterical media articles, the present student movement against cuts and increased fees is not the creation of either the ICC or the EAN. Nor even of the EAN’s rival National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. On the contrary, among the most positive signs of militancy has been the ability of the movement to escape the control of the NUS or any other organisation set up in advance to drive in a particular direction. In fact the NUS has been so spectacularly unable to exert control that the EAN and NCAFC have become very prominent. So, what do they represent?

Anyone attending one of the EAN meetings during the struggles cannot fail to be impressed with the number of uni, FE or school students, teachers and others who come with information about the meetings, discussions and intentions for the next day of action, not only from around London but also around the country. That makes the meeting of interest, but it tells us about the movement the organisation is working in, not the nature of the EAN itself.

When discussing “Where next for the movement” the EAN teach-in on 5December has speakers from the NUT, UCU and the NUS – in other words its perspective for the movement is to take it right back into the clutches of unions, including the NUS, that it has just escaped. They want to oppose “private companies… gaining the power to award degrees…” Here we see the imprint of the SWP and its campaign against privatisation – as if the British state that is actually organising all the attacks were somehow less capitalist and more benign. This is what lies behind the idea of trying to get all the occupations to adopt their predetermined set of demands.

The rival NCAFC promotes itself as non-aligned, but it is an open secret that the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, a Trotskyist group, regard it as their creature and live in fear of it being taken over by Workers Power, a rival Trotskyist group. One former participant concluded “The only difference between the NUS and the NCAFC is that the NUS has the veneer of respectable authority, … It makes the perfect foil for NCAFC’s posturing as the ‘radical’ wing of the movement. But now the NCAFC have tipped their hand. By trying to rein in student anger and delaying action, they will smother the spark that has been lighting this country up from Brighton to Aberdeen. … the NCAFC attempted to turn a day of action that they co-opted into a day of leftist dogma and rhetoric. The NCAFC will try to sanitise this movement just as the NUS have.”[1] In fact he shows how they too want to drag students back into the NUS fold.

So what about People’s Assemblies being called for by the SWP and others? Haven’t we heard good things about assemblies in France trying to take control of their own struggles against the unions? Unfortunately the notion of “Build a People’s Assembly movement”, “democratic bodies representing everyone in a community”, sponsored by various organisations and individuals starting with The Right to Work Campaign, may take the same name, but it doesn’t have any good French wine in the bottle. This is another attempt to set up a body in advance, define a “template”, and persuade students, workers, and others to fit their struggle into it. In reality, these ‘Assemblies’ usually boil down to meetings organised by the leftist networks and taking decisions on behalf of a much larger number of people. 

So far the student movement has escaped control by the NUS, but that is not enough. Like any movement or struggle, if it does not find the means to organise itself, other more radical versions are waiting in the wings, making themselves useful and even indispensable by providing info on their facebook and websites, but with the aim of taking control of the movement and dragging it back into the arms of unions and the left. That is why we need genuine self-organisation, mass meetings that discuss the perspectives and decide on actions. 

Alex 4/12/10

We are publishing here the first part of the resolution on the British situation adopted at the recent Congress of the ICC’s section in the UK. The second part, which looks at the political life of the bourgeoisie and the class struggle, will be published in a future issue, along with a summary of the main debates at the Congress.

Crisis

1. Between 2007 and 2009 capitalism experienced a profound crisis. Starting with the collapse of the housing bubble in the US the crisis spread through the financial markets to the manufacturing and service sectors, drawing the developed economies into recession and slowing the rate of growth in emerging economies like China and India. Credit dried up or became increasingly costly, as financial institutions feared to lend to one another in case their money was not repaid and their own existence was put in question. This crisis exposed the structural weakness underlying all of the spectacular growth of recent years. This weakness is capitalism’s inability to accumulate according to the basic laws of the production and realisation of surplus value. The speculative bubble arose from the difficulty of finding profitable outlets for capital; the credit crunch reflected the bourgeoisie’s recognition of this. One of the main responses has been the resort to debt to try and keep the economy functioning. Although capitalism has returned to growth over the last two years the structural issues have not been resolved. In particular the weight of debt worries the international bourgeoisie.

2. The recession in Britain has been the deepest since the Second World War with a peak to trough fall of 6.4%. Even after several quarters of growth, GDP was still 4.7% below its pre-recession level in the second half of 2010. The bursting of the housing bubble, which had helped to fuel the British economy, led to sharp drops in house prices and sharply reduced the growth in personal borrowing that had been at the heart of the economic growth under Blair and Brown. The manufacturing sector was the most severely hit and the construction sector was savaged with a fall of nearly a third. The impact on the service sector was greater than in previous recessions and its weight in the economy meant that it contributed most to the overall decline in GDP. Imports and exports in both manufacturing and services fell as global trade declined. The number of companies going bankrupt escalated from twelve and a half thousand in 2007 to nineteen thousand in 2009. The stock market reacted with a sharp decline from mid 2007 to early 2009 with its recovery punctuated in early 2010 as fears of highly indebted countries defaulting on their loans spread. The pound fell more sharply against other currencies than since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods Agreement in the early 1970s.

3. The crisis posed a particular threat to Britain because of its reliance on the financial sector. From the last part of the 19th century, Britain exploited its empire and its position as the “world’s banker” to compensate for the loss of its manufacturing dominance; this tendency was further accentuated after the First World War. Following the Second World War and the US’s assertion of its dominance Britain was forced to look for other ways of appropriating a share of the global surplus value. The route it took was to develop its financial sector with the result that this went from accounting for about 1.5% of profits between 1948 and 1970 to 15% today. The state has supported this development with successive governments from Thatcher onwards pursuing the liberalisation of the financial markets. By 2006 the assets of British banks totalled more than five times the national GDP. In comparison, US banking assets rose from 20% to 100% of GDP over the same period. The spectacular growth in assets was matched by the equally spectacular decline of the banks’ capital ratio, which fell from 15-20% at the start of the 20th century to just 5% at its end. All of this meant that when the crash came the British economy was particularly exposed and the bourgeoisie was confronted with a threat not only to its financial sector but also to the economy as a whole and to Britain’s international status.

4. The immediate response of the British bourgeoisie reflected the scale of the threat facing it. The state did not hesitate to assert itself to defend its class interests. Despite its ideology about the greater efficiency of the free market, the bourgeoisie did not hesitate to nationalise some banks and force others to merge. It cut interest rates to the lowest level on record and effectively below the rate of inflation. It injected £200bn of “quantitative easing” into the economy and gave guarantees to the banks worth hundreds of billions of pounds in the name of kick starting lending and, thereby, the whole process of accumulation (in fact the banks mainly used this fictitious capital to restore their finances and resume speculation). It cut VAT and introduced the car scrappage scheme to try and stimulate consumption. It even used terrorism laws against the Icelandic banks. The total cost of this intervention was £121.5bn in 2009 and the immediate consequence was a rapid increase in the total state debt to £926.9bn in July 2010. The effect was to prevent any further bank collapses, to stabilise the financial sector and facilitate the modest recovery recently seen.

5. Today the bourgeoisie has moved from the immediate containment of the effects of the crisis to an attempt to restore the profitability and standing of British capitalism. The first step in this is to try and reduce the national debt in the name of winning the confidence of the financial markets. This is the immediate purpose of the attacks on pay and conditions. The problem of such large debts is that in addition to the interest payments being a further deduction from the total surplus value produced – and hence a deduction from future profits unless the proportion of the value produced that goes to the working class can be reduced - its existence poses questions about the long term capacity of the economy to produce profits. The second is to reduce the cost of labour and the amount of the national product taken by the state in the medium to long term in order to increase the productivity and competitiveness of British manufacturing and services and hence the profits available to the capitalist class. In this effort a renewed importance is being given to manufacturing which, despite its continued decline, is still a significant part of the economy, especially as regards exports where it accounts for a much larger proportion of the total than the service sector.

6. The recession did not affect the working class as severely as might have been expected during its official phase. In particular, although unemployment went up by nearly a million, the increase was less than in previous recessions and one million less than indicated by the fall in GDP. One of the reasons for this was that the decisive intervention of the state limited the immediate impact of the recession, protecting both industry and the workers employed from the full force of the crisis. The other was that the working class accepted low wage settlements, reductions in hours and other changes to its working conditions as the price of keeping jobs. However, as in past recessions it is likely that unemployment will continue to rise for several years after the formal end of the recession and it is now clear that there will be unprecedented cuts in the social wage in the years ahead. In this sense the intervention by the state can be seen as a way of spreading the impact of the recession in order to minimise its social consequences while still achieving its ‘beneficial’ outcomes of destroying surplus capital, eliminating the least competitive producers and reducing the cost of labour. For the working class this will add to a situation that is already characterised by high levels of hidden unemployment and underemployment. Moreover the state has indicated its determination to force workers off benefits such as incapacity - one of the means previously used to hide the real rate of employment - into low-paid work or lower rate benefits. Most workers already have high levels of personal debt in the form of mortgages and unsecured borrowing; and although the rate at which it is increasing has slowed under the weight of the crisis, it still amounts to nearly one and half trillion pounds, or more than the total produced in the country each year. The consequences of this can be seen in the increase in the number of people effectively going bankrupt. It also finds a reflection in the increase in poverty over the last few years, from 18% to 22% of the population. In short, while the immediate effects of the recession have been slightly muted, the situation of the working class has become more precarious over recent decades and is likely to worsen in those ahead.

7. What are the perspectives for British capitalism? This cannot be separated from that of capitalism as a whole where growth of some kind will continue. Official figures are already showing several quarters of increasing GDP – slower in the developed economies, faster in the emerging ones. This is to be expected since capitalism cannot exist without expansion, without growth. However, the basis of growth in recent decades has been the use of increasing amounts of fictitious capital and a global reduction in the proportion of value taken by the working class (one of the main results of China’s entry into the global economy has been to reduce the cost of labour power by massively increasing its supply). The repeated flight of capital – fictitious or otherwise – to speculation rather than production suggests that the underlying conditions for the production and realisation of surplus value remain weak. Given this, the conditions that historically pushed Britain towards reliance on the financial sector will not be overcome and the attempt to raise the competitiveness of British manufacturing will meet the challenge that all are trying to do the same and that many are in a better starting position. This does not mean that there can be no change in the economy, just that such changes will almost certainly be only marginal. To illustrate the scale of the problem confronting the bourgeoisie, a recent report revealed that the total (public and private) debt of the UK will reach £10.2 trillion by 2015, nearly six times GDP. The bulk of this debt is held by the private sector, giving the lie to the current ideology that it is government debt that is the main problem. British capitalism as a whole is bankrupt and this will undoubtedly be expressed in further and deeper convulsions.

Imperialism

8. The imperialist situation continues to be largely defined by the drawn out crisis of American imperialism as its ability to dominate the globe other than through shows of military strength continues to decline, and by the increasing complexity of the situation as the lesser powers seize the chance to advance their own interests. This is especially evident in the area comprising Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq where a range of strategic and economic interests collides. For the US it increasingly resembles a trap where leaving carries as many risks as staying.

9. British imperialism is also struggling in the impasse that it got into as a result of the failure of its imperialist policy under Blair. The attempt by Blair to adapt to the American offensive that followed 9/11 led to Britain being sucked into the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan with the result that its position on the world stage became further weakened, continuing the decline seen for much of the previous century. Attempts to assume international leadership, such as during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and at the Copenhagen climate change summit, have been rebuffed, leaving Blair and Brown sidelined and humiliated. This humiliation has continued, first in Iraq where the British Lion withdrew with its tail between its legs after its failure to control the situation in Basra, and then in Afghanistan with its failure to contain the conflict in Helmand province. In both cases the US had to come in and sort things out. However, for now Britain is hanging on in Afghanistan because it considers it necessary to keep at least a toehold in this centre of imperialist conflict.

10. Despite these failures the British bourgeoisie has not given up the pursuit of its imperialist interests around the globe. Forced to recognise the decline in its status and power it has not given up the ambition or the pretence to be a significant global player. Even before the election there were efforts to develop an approach that would escape the impasse by adopting a new approach that reached out beyond the dominance of the US and Germany (as the main power in Europe). The coalition has begun to try to develop this in practice, most notably through Cameron’s foreign tour in July 2010 when he proposed taking a more robust approach towards the US and sought to cultivate better relationships with powers such as Turkey and India. The support for Turkey’s application to join the EU seems designed to water down German domination of Europe by expanding it and bringing in countries that may be more hostile. The treaties signed with France to increase co-operation may indeed have a practical dimension, as has been emphasised in the media, but they are also seem to be an attempt to counter German and US influence.

11. The pursuit of economic interests is being given a greater significance in the new strategy being put together. This was evident in the trip to India in July 2010 when a deal to sell military equipment was signed, and has been confirmed in the visit to China in November 2010 with the proposed signing of deals to supply the Chinese market, reportedly worth several billion pounds. The reason for this development is the economic crisis and the attempt to build up the role of manufacturing in order to counter the dependence of the British economy on the financial sector and its consequent vulnerability to further crises when future speculative bubbles burst.

12. Despite these efforts British imperialism will find it very difficult to find a way out of the impasse and all but impossible to regain the power it has lost. At a practical level, the scale of the cuts in the defence budget means that it will be less able to intervene. The contradiction between its ambitions and this reality is revealed in the almost comic decision to build aircraft carriers without any aircraft. At the strategic and political level it has to continue to acknowledge the reality of American power in the world and German domination in Europe. While the growing imperialist power of China and to a lesser extent other emerging countries like India offer new fields for action it is unlikely that the former will become a serious challenger to the US in the near future while the latter remains focussed on its regional ambitions. Moreover the imperialist situation will continue to be characterised by great complexity since there is no real dynamic towards the formation of new blocs that would impose some order on the situation. The inescapable reality for Britain is that like most of the lesser powers it is dependent on grasping opportunities from the evolution of a situation that is shaped by greater or better positioned powers. Increasing the size of the special forces may enhance its ability to undertake covert operations but these can rarely gain more than tactical victories. In terms of developing networks beyond the major powers Britain has relatively little to offer such powers while the baggage it still carries from the days of empire and the legacy of its arrogance towards lesser powers and peoples that it retained even after the sun set on the empire is a hurdle to forging alliances of any duration or stability.

WR 30/11/10.

The movement of struggle against the pension reforms has lasted eight months so far. Workers and employees of all sectors have regularly come into the streets in their millions. Since September more or less radical strike movements have appeared here and there, expressing a profound and growing discontent. This mobilisation is the broadest in France since the crisis which shook the world financial system in 2007-8. It is not only a response to the pension reform itself but, in its breadth and depth, it is a clear response to the violence of the attacks over the last couple of years. Behind this reform, and the other attacks being prepared at the same time, we see the whole working class and other strata in the population being pushed further into poverty, precariousness and misery. And these attacks aren’t even close to ending because of the inexorable deepening of the economic crisis. This struggle is clearly only the harbinger of others following on from those in Greece and Spain in the face of drastic austerity measures.

However, despite the massive and impressive size of this reaction, the government has not given way. On the contrary, it is unwavering, despite the pressure in the streets, relentlessly affirming its firm will to push through this attack, constantly and cynically repeating that it is ‘necessary’, in the name of ‘solidarity’ between the generations. Everyone knows this is a great lie, almost a provocation.

At the time of writing the mobilisation is retreating and it is certain that the reform will be achieved for the bourgeoisie. Why is that? Why is this measure, which is a blow to the very heart of our working conditions, and when the whole population has so powerfully expressed its indignation, passed in spite of everything?

Why has this massive movement not succeeded in pushing back the government?

Because the government is sure the unions have control of the situation, unions which have always accepted the principle of a ‘necessary reform’ of pensions! All the left parties, which have tried to graft themselves onto the mobilisation to avoid losing all credibility, are also fully agreed on the necessity of this attack on the working class. After all, they voted for it.

We can compare it with the movement against the CPE in 2006. This movement, treated with great suspicion by the media at first as a futureless “student revolt”, ended by forcing the government to withdraw the CPE.

Why did that movement meet with success?

First of all because the students were organised in mass meetings (general assemblies) open to all, making no distinction between categories, public or private, at work or unemployed, etc. This surge of confidence in the capacities and strength of the working class, of profound solidarity in struggle, created a dynamic of extension in the movement, a breadth drawing in all generations. On the one hand the mass meetings aimed to hold the widest possible discussions, without being confined to the problems of students; on the other hand we saw demonstrations by workers mobilised alongside the university students and numerous school students.

But it was also because of the students’ determination and openness, drawing fractions of the working class into open struggle, not falling for union manoeuvres. On the contrary, when the unions and especially the CGT tried to place themselves at the head of the demonstrations to take control of them, university and school students overflowed the union banners several times, clearly showing that they did not want to be reduced to an after-thought when they had taken the initiative in the movement. Above all they showed their intention to keep control of the struggle themselves and not hand it over to the union leadership.

In fact one of the most disturbing things for the bourgeoisie was the way the students organised their struggle, the sovereign general assemblies, electing their coordination committees, and open to all. The student union often had a low profile, not making much ground among the workers when they went on strike. It is no accident that during the movement Thibault, head of the CGT, often said that workers have nothing to learn on how to organise from students. If the students had their assemblies and coordinations, workers had confidence in their unions.

In the context of such a determined movement showing the danger of overflowing the unions, Villepin had to give something up as this was the bourgeoisie’s last protection against the explosion of massive struggles which risked making a breakthrough.

With the movement against the pension reform the unions, often actively supported by the police and media, were able to do enough to take the high ground, seeing what was coming and getting themselves organised for it.

The Intersyndicale in the service of the government

From the beginning we saw a division of labour among the unions, with the Force Ouvrière holding its own separate demonstrations, while the Intersyndicale (inter-union coalition) organised the day of action on 23 March, aimed at ‘tying up’ the reform after negotiation with the government, and two other days of action on 26 March and especially 24 June, just before the summer holidays. We know that days of action at this time of year are often the coup de grace for working class when it is facing a major attack. Alas for the bourgeoisie and its unions, this last day of action showed an unexpected mobilisation, with more than double the number of workers, unemployed, or temporary workers, etc, in the streets. And while the first two days of action were gloomy affairs, as underlined by the press, anger and the feeling that enough is enough were evident on 24 June.

So, under the pressure of this open discontent and faced with a growing consciousness about the implications of this reform for our living conditions, the unions found themselves constrained to organise another day of action on 7 September, this time calling for the unity of trade unions. Since then, none have failed to call for the days of action which attracted around 3 million workers on several occasions.

But this “Intersyndicale” unity is a trap for the working class, destined to convince them that the unions are really determined to organise a broad offensive against the reform and that the way to do this is repeated days of action in which we watch and hear their leaders, arm in arm, engaging in their discourse on the ‘continuation’ of the movement and other lies. What they dread above all is that the workers escape the union shackles and organise themselves. This is what Thibalt, secretary general of the CGT, said which “sent a message” to the government in an interview in Le Monde on 10 September: “We could be going towards a blockage, towards a broad social crisis. It’s possible. But it wasn’t us that took this risk”, giving the following example to make his point better on what the unions see is at stake: “We even found a SME without any union where 40 out of 44 workers were on strike. This is a sign. The more intransigence dominates, the more the idea of repeated strikes gains strength.”

If the unions were not there workers would organise themselves and not only really decide what they want to do but risk doing it massively. Union leaderships, and particularly the CGT, have zealously worked to prevent this: putting themselves centre stage socially and in the media, all the while preventing any real expression of workers’ solidarity on the ground. In brief, an out and out barrage on the one hand and on the other activity aiming to sterilise the movement and marshal it behind false alternatives in order to create division, confusion and better lead it to defeat.

The refinery blockade is the most obvious example. When these workers, who were already very militant, showed an increasing will to express their solidarity with the whole working class against the pension reform, and particularly confronted with drastic personal reductions, the CGT wanted to transform this solidarity into a high profile strike. So, the refinery blockade was never truly decided in the mass meetings where workers could really express their point of view, but had been decided according to the manoeuvres that union leaders specialise in. So the workers were pushed into a dead-end action, spoiling the discussion. However, in spite of being locked into this by the unions, some refinery workers sought to make contact with workers in other sectors. But, overall, caught up in the logic of the ‘complete blockade’, the majority of refinery workers were trapped in the union notion of keeping to the factory, a real blow against the broadening of the fight. In fact, while the refinery workers wanted to reinforce the movement to push back the government, the blockade of the depots unfolding under union leadership proved to be a weapon of the bourgeoisie and unions against the workers. Not only to isolate them in the refineries, but to make their strike unpopular by causing panic buying and threatening a more general fuel shortage. The press prolifically spreading its venom against those ‘taking us hostage, preventing people from getting to work or leave on holiday’. The workers in this industry also found themselves isolated; when they wanted to contribute with a solid struggle and create a relation of force in favour of the withdrawal of the reform, this particular blockade was turned against them and against the objective that they initially intended.

There were numerous similar union actions, in areas such as transport, and preferably in regions with fewer workers, for at all costs the unions want to reduce the risk of extension and active solidarity. They must play to the gallery and appear to orchestrate the most radical struggles, and choreograph the work of the different unions in the demonstration, all to spoil it in reality.

As was said in the leaflet from the “AG interpro” at the Gare de l’Est on 6 November: “The strength of the workers does not only lie in blockading a petrol depot here or there or even a factory. The strength of the workers is to unite in their workplaces, over and above their job category, where they work, for which enterprise or industry, and to make decisions together…”

We have seen the unions united in one “Intersyndicale” everywhere, all the better to promote the appearance of unity, setting up the appearance of mass meetings without any real debate, caught up in the most corporatist preoccupations, all the while publicly adhering to their pretended will to fight ‘for all’ and ‘all together’… but each organised separately, behind its little union chief, and doing everything to prevent massive delegations searching for solidarity in neighbouring enterprises.

A movement rich in perspectives

On the other hand there has been nothing at all in the media about the numerous interprofessional committees or general assemblies[1] which formed during this period, committees and assemblies whose aim is to remain organised outside the unions and to develop discussions that are really open to all workers, as well as to organise autonomous actions which all workers can not only recognise but also and above all participate in massively.

Besides, the unions are not the only ones to impede such a mobilisation, for Sarkozy’s police, with their reputation for pretended stupidity and anti-left spirit, have been an indispensable aid to the unions on several occasions through their provocations. Example? The incidents at the Place Bellegour in Lyons, where the presence of a handful of ‘rioters’ (possibly manipulated by the cops) was the pretext for a violent police repression against hundreds of young school students, the majority of them only wanting to discuss with workers at the end of the demonstration.

Here we see what the bourgeoisie particularly fears: that contacts build up and multiply as widely as possible in the working class, young, old, at work, unemployed.

Today the movement is on the way to being extinguished and it is necessary to draw the lessons of this defeat.

The first lesson to draw is that it was the union apparatus that allowed the attack on workers to be passed and that this was not theonly time. They were doing their dirty work, for which all the specialists and sociologists, as well as the government and Sarkozy himself, saluted their ‘sense of responsibility’. Yes, the bourgeoisie can, without hesitation, congratulate itself on having ‘responsible’ unions capable of smashing such a broad movement and at the same time making it appear that they did everything possible to allow it to develop. This is still the same union apparatus which stifled and marginalised the real expressions of autonomous class struggle.

However, this defeat bears many fruits; for despite all the efforts of all the bourgeoisie’s forces to seal off any breaches where workers’ anger escaped, they have not succeeded in dragging it into the general defeat of a sector as they did in 2003 (see IR 114), when the struggle against public sector cuts gave way to a bitter retreat among workers in education after several weeks on strike.

This movement is coming to an end. But “the attack is only beginning. We have lost a battle, we have not lost the war. The bourgeoisie has declared the class war on us and we still have the means to conduct it” (leaflet entitled “No-one can struggle, take decisions or win in our place” signed by the workers and precarious workers of the inter-professional general assembly at the Gare de l’Est and Ile-de-France, already quoted above). To defend ourselves we have no choice but to extend and develop our struggles massively and to take them into our own hands.

“Have confidence in our own strength” must be the slogan for tomorrow. 

WW 6/11/10. Translated from our paper in France, Révolution Internationale, no 417

Leaflet of the GA of Saint-Sernin (Toulouse)

Leaflet of a group of individuals from the GA at the Gare de l’Est (Paris)

The movement of student protest is clearly international. High school and college students played a leading role in the movements in Greece at the end of 2008, following the police murder of a young anarchist, and they have been active in the various general strikes against the government’s austerity packages. The movement in Greece in 2008 showed a very high degree of internationalism in many of its declarations, and we saw this again on 2 December, when 2000 Greek students, also fighting their own government’s education ‘reforms’, marched on the British embassy to express their solidarity with the student protests in the UK. After clashes with the police, 5 students were arrested, after which the march proceeded to the police station to demand their immediate release.

In France this autumn, university and high school students were massively involved in the widespread mobilisations against the government’s attack on pensions, just as they had been in the movement against the ‘CPE’ (a law underlining the precariousness of employment for those in their first jobs) in 2006.

But at the time of writing, there is an even bigger battle going on in Italy against the ‘Gelmini reform’ which uses the trick of privatisation to push through budget cuts and increased fees. Here is an extract from the blog Italy Calling (https://italycalling.wordpress.com [195]), written on 1 December and also published on www.libcom.org: [196]

“Last night the Chamber of Deputies approved the Gelmini reform. 307 votes in favour, 252 against, 7 abstained. The reform will be passed over to the Senate on 9th December for its 3rd reading, then to the Chamber of Deputies again for the final vote.

Today thousands of students went back to the streets. Assemblies and meetings are being held all over the place to decide about mobilisation tactics for the next few days, and many more schools, colleges and faculties have been occupied.

In Naples, students have occupied the train station. Up until 3pm all train circulation was completely stopped. In Bologna, students have occupied the Council House. The local airport has been broken into again in Pisa. In Palermo the students spent last night in the occupied Council House. Faculties and schools already occupied have decided to keep the occupations going till the 14th December, when the Chamber of Deputies will give its final vote.

Yesterday’s protests paralysed Italy: At least 18 major train stations were completely stopped for hours; motorways and airports were targeted for direct action and pickets. Other targets, just like in the last few days, were monuments and government buildings. The protests got fiery in Rome when students gathered outside Montecitorio (Chamber of Deputies ) and tried to break in just when the Chamber was voting on the reform. Marches in the city centre very violently charged by the police, who used teargas”

Many will be reminded of the student protests of the 1960s, which were often the swallow announcing the summer of workers’ strikes in many countries, most notably France in 1968 and Italy in 1969. But today ‘higher education’ is far less a privilege of people from better-off families. A far larger proportion of young proletarians expect to go to university as part of their training for a life of wage labour – and many are also compelled to work part time to fund their studies. The present revolt in the universities and schools is much more directly a part of the working class struggle in general; and it is much more strongly supported by the working class as a whole, who see their own children struggling against government attacks which are part of the general austerity offensive of the capitalist state. The promise of direct solidarity between students and workers is already beginning to be realised.  

Amos 4/12/10

Workers’ Assemblies

Community Organising

Fighting the cuts

Dutch and German communist left

The next session, given by a member of the AF, was on the Dutch/German communist left. We were in agreement with virtually all of it. The presentation made no attempt to hide the fact that the Dutch and German communist left were Marxists and were often very critical of anarchism; that they were unequivocal supporters of the Russian revolution and the Bolshevik party at the beginning of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave. The description of their positions on unions, parliament, national liberation and the USSR was accurate and nuanced. The speaker defended the left communists from the charge that they had been an irrelevant and tiny sect, showing that their membership and their influence among the most advanced sectors of the working class was far from insignificant; when the discussion turned to the reasons for the dramatic shrinking of this current in the late 20s and 30s, the emphasis was rightly laid on the general defeat of the working class which reduced all its revolutionary expressions to an almost invisible minority. At the same time he recognised that those sections of the Dutch/German left who had most theorised anti-organisational ideas also helped to dig their own political graves. One point in the presentation we endorsed with particular enthusiasm: at the beginning, when posing the question ‘why should we as anarchists look at this Marxist tradition?’ the answer given was that anarchists should learn as much as possible about all the genuinely revolutionary expressions of the workers’ movement. The comrade had also said that some had accused the AF of ‘pinching’ the mantle of left communism, which we took to be a reference to past statements the ICC has made about the AF. Our response to this was to admit that in the past we have been too dismissive of the revolutionary tendencies in anarchism; and while we had indeed made such statements about the AF, we are now fully convinced that we can only welcome the fact that comrades coming from an anarchist standpoint want to find out as much as they can about the history of the communist left.

Struggling against the Poll Tax

Our comrades from the Grupo de Lucha Proletaria (Peru) have sent us this article, which is a very clear, simple and vibrant denunciation of the way Piñera and the Chilean bourgeoisie have made maximum use of the rescue of the Chilean miners to wage a whole campaign of nationalism.  

It is the same in the all the mines in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico and in every mine in the world[1]. Miners are always faced with the most terrible working conditions, along with illness and accidents. The mine operators are all the same, because terrible working conditions translate into less running costs and thus increased profits. Miners are condemned to breathing dust in these hell holes and are always faced with the threat of being engulfed by the earth.

This is what happened in the San José mine, in Copiapó, 850 kilometers North of Sanitago, Chile, when 33 miners were trapped for more than two months in a deep tunnel.

A great media show

In no time at all the media (press, radio, TV, internet...) had informed every corner of the earth about this event. It filled the media for almost 24hours a day. 33 miners buried alive in a mine, scenes of silent death. The heroes to the rescue of those who were entombed were: the Chilean state lead by Piñera and the mining company San Esteban Primera.

The aim of the whole thing was obvious from the beginning: to show that the state and the company were with the workers in their worst moments and were worried about them.

Hiding the terrible working conditions

But it was not enough just to show “solidarity” with the miners. The state along with the mining company quickly sought international help (NASA and other specialists) in order to hide the deplorably insecure conditions in which the workers of the San Jose mine had to work.

“The miners had already raised the deplorable lack of safety at the mine. In July they asked the Minister Laurence Golborne[2]to close down the San Jóse site. There have been repeated complainants about the company’s accident record. The Minister of Mines responding by saying that the mine created work” [3]

The complicity of the state and the mining company

It was impossible for the state to hide the responsibility of the management. Therefore the state and the Ministry of Mines had to present themselves as heroes of the working class in this tragic situation, which is the kind of thing faced every day by the miners of Chile and the whole world.

The bourgeoisie’s fear of widespread discontent

Piñera understood that these events are commonplace for miners, and he knows that the best way to deal with this is to show concern for the suffering of the miners and their families. He had to do this quickly because he knew that the indignation of the miners’ families and the surrounding miners was going to grow, and that there was a possibility that this solidarity would spread within the working class, creating the possibility of an uprising. The state was fully aware of the militancy of the miners and feared it.

A massive nationalist and triumphalist campaign

We have been living through a massive campaign of nationalist propaganda with a disgusting whiff of paternalism and triumphalism around the effort to rescue the miners in Chile. The State, with Piñera in the forefront, has created a climate of nationalist festivities around the miners rescue, we have been shown that the state and the bourgeoisie have the same interests as the workers, that Chile is with them and they are presented as Chilean citizens above all else.

Nationalism hides the deception and exploitation of the working class. We have seen workers singing the national anthem in squares and streets, kissing the flag along with their brothers: exploited and exploiters. Workers have fallen into a bourgeois trap and the nationalism spewed forth by the exploiting class: “Long Live Chile”, “Proud to be Chilean”, “The great Chilean Family” “thanks to the whole of Chile”. All of these are expressions of nationalist poison, a poison that directly attacks, workers’ class consciousness, dragging them off the terrain of class demands and struggles.

The proletariat in Chile and the rest of the world must understand that nationalism leads to a dead-end, by dividing the proletariat by country, and that it ends up in world-wide massacres. Capitalism’s only interest is to maintain divisions and conflicts between workers. What are the differences between miners in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia or Mexico..? None. However they have many things in common. They all suffer the same inhuman working conditions, in each tunnel and mine. They also have the same common denominator: they are part of the same social class and therefore have the same interests to defend. When workers support the fatherland and the state, they are reinforcing the chains of exploitation and slavery. The proletariat has to draw the lessons that it cannot lose its class perspective. Faced with patriotic hymns, colored rags, gifts and bribes, they must affirm that all these efforts by the bourgeoisie and state are nothing more than huge deceptions and sleights of hand. Their sole concern is to profit from our toil. After this rescue, the working conditions will remain the same or even worsen due to capitalism’s worldwide crisis, and the ruling class can do nothing to change this situation. Only workers’ unity against the interests of the exploiters offers the possibility of another life. The international working class, through spreading its economic struggles, regaining and deepening its political vision, can demonstrate to the whole of humanity that it is capable to putting forward a truly human community, where its role as beasts of burden is abolished forever.

Workers of the world unite!

Grupo de Lucha Proletaria 20/10/10

Tourists to Ireland are invited to explore a land of myths and legends. Over the last fifteen years imaginative tales about the state of the Irish economy have added enormously to the available mythology.

From the mid 1990s there was the tale of the Celtic Tiger, the story of how Irish prosperity was becoming so entrenched that even perpetual emigration was being reversed. As George Osborne put it in 2006 “Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking.”

But since Ireland became the first country in the eurozone to go into recession there has followed, from the emergency budget of October 2008, an escalating series of austerity measures and funds pumped into banks during 2009 and 2010. Far from leading to a happy ending the spending cuts and tax rises have only led to the latest round of cuts and the €85billion bailout from the IMF, EU and ECB.

There was nothing substantial in the ‘prosperity’ and the imposition of austerity will bring only suffering, offering no solution to the crisis of the capitalist economy.

The latest round of attacks

The most recent measures proposed at the end of November are by no means the last: more are expected in the budget of 7 December. What we have already seen over the last two years are the loss of thousands of jobs and the cutting of services that the majority of the population relies on. One in seven is already officially out of work and workers in the public sector have already seen their wages cut. In the latest package the minimum wage has been cut by 1 euro per hour (that’s 12%). The income tax threshold has been brought down from €18,000 to about €15,300, bringing more of the lowest earners into the tax regime. Pensions have been frozen for the next four years. Pension age will gradually be increased to 68. There will be cuts in a variety of welfare payments, including unemployment benefit, but the details will not be revealed until 7 December. VAT will go up in 2013 and also 2014. Carbon tax is going to be doubled. A brand new water tax is going to be introduced, as well as a property tax that will affect all households. The government’s calculations rely on 100,000 people emigrating by 2014.

In response to each round of government attacks there has been a major demonstration organised by the unions. This time round the Irish Congress of Trade Unions made sure it got over the message that the austerity measures were unfair and too harsh and it was a pity that Corporation Tax hadn’t been put up. Many protesters insisted that the government were ‘puppets of the EU and IMF’. Even government ministers complained that Ireland, like Portugal, was being pressured into accepting EU/IMF conditions. While financial support came from the IMF, various EU bodies and also the UK, Sweden and Denmark, the Irish state was compelled to make its contribution to the bank bailout by taking €17.5billion from the National Pension Reserve Fund.

There is no secret in the role of the IMF and EU bodies. After Greece, the bourgeoisie internationally was anxious that the collapse of the economies of Ireland and Portugal would have an impact on the stability not just of the eurozone, but far beyond. The UK is not part of the eurozone, but the government judged its €7bn contribution as a necessary step to take, ultimately in the interests of the British economy. All economies are interrelated; none can function in isolation from the rest of the world economy. After the latest bail-out there was still concern about the possibilities of success with the Irish economy, as well as speculation about whether it would be Spain, Italy or Belgium that would be the next country in need of emergency treatment.

False alternatives

As for the harshness of each round of attacks, the critics might disagree on details, but, as in the UK, there is agreement on the need to deal with the deficit. Sinn Fein, for example, have recently produced a document entitled ‘There is a better way’, which they boast “is fully costed and endorsed by independent economists.” In it they claim that greater taxing of the rich and big corporations will generate billions, and if the government were to “take €7 billion from the National Pension Reserve Fund for a three and a half year state wide investment programme” it would “stimulate the economy and create jobs.” The deficit would be reduced because the stimulus to the economy would bring growth. The experience of the capitalist economy over the last hundred years has shown that whether resorting to debt, investment, spending cuts or tax rises, no government has found a way of escaping the reality of the capitalist economic crisis.

Socialist Worker (27/11/10), writing about the Irish crisis, has a solution that will suit all countries. “Governments could take the banks under full control—taking any profits, sacking the bankers and using the cash for projects society needs... Taxes should be massively increased on the rich and business [...] The expenditure on imperialist war and the military should end tomorrow. Governments such as Greece and Ireland could defy the International Monetary Fund and the European Union’s demands for cuts.”

The nationalisation of the banks is already very far advanced in Ireland, as it is in the UK and elsewhere. Following the latest bailout the government stake in the Allied Irish Bank is more than 96%; in the Anglo Irish Bank it’s 100%; in the Bank of Ireland (so diminished that it’s now a smaller financial institution than Paddy Power the bookmaker, but it is still a bank) it’s more than 70%; in the Irish Nationwide it’s 100%, as it is with the EBS. The intervention of the capitalist state in every aspect of economic and life has been a major trend over the last century and in no way represents any gain for the working class. The Socialist Workers Party does talk about the need for a “powerful mass movement” but only as a way of backing governments. To say that Greece or Ireland could ‘defy’ the IMF and the EU is a denial of the reality of the capitalist economy: beggars can’t be choosers. And, if there were to be a foolish show of ‘defiance’, then the renunciation of military expenditure would be unwise, as capitalist powers very readily resort to military ways of enforcing their will.

As for the increased taxation, behind this lies the idea that if only capitalist society was organised in a different way it could be made to function without exploitation and economic crises. A year ago, in December 2009, Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said: “We have turned a corner . . . If we work together now and share the burden, we can deliver sustainable economic growth for all.” A year later we can see that no corner was turned and that, far from sharing the burden, the poorest are the biggest victims. As for growth and sustainability, wherever they are shown to exist in the world you can be sure it’s at others’ expense.

The large demonstrations that have accompanied each wave of announcements have shown that there is widespread anger in Ireland at how the exploited have to pay for the crisis. In opinion polls 57% think the government should default on all its debts. This would produce no more gain than has resulted from the union controlled demos. As elsewhere the needs of the working class can only be met through workers organising themselves, from discussing the means and goals of their struggle, and fighting for their own interests. To put any confidence in governments or unions is fatal for workers’ struggles. The history of the workers’ movement shows that government reforms and union processions offer the working class nothing, as the only reliable perspective lies in massive struggles culminating in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

WR 1/12/10

The thunder in Tunisia and Egypt is being echoed in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen. Whatever flags the demonstrators carry, all these protests have their root in the world wide crisis of capitalism and its direct consequences: unemployment, rising prices, austerity, and the repression and corruption of the governments who preside over these brutal attacks on living standards. In short, they have the same origins as the revolt of Greek youth against police repression in 2008, the struggle against pension ‘reforms’ in France, the student rebellions in Italy and Britain, and workers’ strikes from Bangladesh to China and from Spain to the USA.

The determination, courage and sense of solidarity being displayed in the streets of Tunis, Cairo, Alexandria and many other cities are a true inspiration. The masses occupying Tahrir Square in Cairo or similar public places have fed themselves, fought off attacks by pro-regime thugs and the police, called the soldiers to fraternise with them, nursed their wounded, openly rejected sectarian divisions between Muslim and Christian, between the religious and the secular. In the neighbourhoods they have formed committees to protect their homes from looters manipulated by the police. Tens of thousands have effectively been on strike for days and even weeks in order to swell the ranks of the demonstrations.

Faced with this spectre of massive revolt, with the nightmare prospect of its extension across the ‘Arab world’ and even beyond, the ruling class all over the world has been responding with its two trustiest weapons: repression and mystification. In Tunisia, scores were gunned down in the streets, but now the ruling class proclaims the beginning of a transition to democracy; in Egypt, the Mubarak regime alternates between beating, shooting, gassing and running down protestors and issuing similar vague promises. In Gaza, Hamas arrests demonstrators trying to show solidarity with the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt; on the West Bank the PLO has banned “unlicensed gatherings” called to support the uprisings; and in Iraq protests against unemployment and shortages are fired on by the regime installed by the US and British ‘liberators’. In Algeria, after stifling the first signs of revolt, concessions are made legalising timid forms of protest; in Jordan the King sacks his government.

Internationally, the capitalist class also alternates its language: some – especially those on the right, and of course the rulers of Israel – openly support Mubarak’s regime as the only bulwark against an Islamist takeover. But the key note is given by Obama: after some initial hesitations, the message is that Mubarak must go and go quickly. The ‘transition to democracy’ is put forward as the only way forward for the downtrodden masses of North Africa and the Middle East.

The dangers facing the movement

The mass movement centred in Egypt thus faces two dangers. One is that the spirit of revolt will be drowned in blood. It seems that the initial attempts by the Mubarak regime to save itself with the iron fist have been stymied: first the police had to withdraw from the streets in the face of the massive demonstrations, and the unleashing of the pro-Mubarak thugs last week has also failed to sap the demonstrators’ will to continue. In both rounds of confrontation, the army has presented itself as a ‘neutral’ force, even as being on the side of the anti-Mubarak gatherings and protecting them from assaults by the regime’s defenders. There is no doubt that many of the soldiers sympathise with the protests and would not be willing to fire on the masses in the streets; some have already deserted. Higher up in the army, there are certainly factions that want Mubarak to go now. But the army of the capitalist state is not a neutral force. Its ‘protection’ of Tahrir Square is a also a form of containment, a huge kettle; and when push comes to shove, the army will indeed be used against the exploited population, unless the latter succeeds in winning over the rank and file soldiers and effectively dissolving the army as an organised part of the state power.  

But here we come to the second great danger facing the movement: the danger that resides in its widespread illusions in democracy. The belief that the state can, perhaps after a few reforms, be made to serve the people; the belief that ‘all Egyptians’, perhaps with the exception of a few corrupt individuals, have the same basic interests. The belief in the neutrality of the army. The belief that the terrible poverty facing the majority of the population can be overcome if there is a functioning parliament and an end to the arbitrary rule of a Ben Ali or a Mubarak.  

These illusions, expressed everyday by the demonstrators’ own words and banners, disarm the real movement for emancipation, which can only advance as a movement of the working class fighting for its own interests, which are distinct from those of other social strata, and which are above all diametrically opposed to the interest of the bourgeoisie and all its parties and factions. The innumerable expressions of solidarity and self-organisation that we have seen so far already reflect the genuinely proletarian element in the current social revolts; and, as many of the protestors have already said, they presage a new and more human society. But this new and better society cannot be brought about through parliamentary elections, through putting el Baradei or the Muslim Brotherhood or any other bourgeois faction at the head of the state. These factions, who may be carried to power by the strength of the masses’ illusions, will not hesitate to use repression against these same masses later on.

There is much talk about ‘revolution’ in Tunisia and Egypt, both from the mainstream media and the extreme left. But the only revolution that makes sense today is the proletarian revolution, because we are living in an era in which capitalism, democratic or dictatorial, quite plainly can offer nothing to humanity. Such a revolution can only succeed on an international scale, breaking through all national borders and overthrowing all nation states. Today’s class struggles and mass revolts are certainly stepping stones on the way to such a revolution, but they face all kinds of obstacles on the road; and to reach the goal of revolution, profound changes in the political organisation and consciousness of millions of people have yet to take place.

In a way, the situation in Egypt today is a summation of the historic situation facing humanity as a whole. Capitalism is in terminal decline. The ruling class can offer no perspective for the future of the planet; but the exploited class is not yet aware of its own power, its own perspectives, its own programme for the transformation of society. The ultimate danger is that this temporary stalemate will end in “the mutual ruin of the contending classes”, as the Communist Manifesto put it – in a plunge into chaos and destruction. But the working class, the proletariat, will only discover its real power through engaging in real struggles, and this is why what is now taking place in North Africa and the Middle East is, for all the weaknesses and illusions that hamper it, a real beacon for workers everywhere.

And above all it is a call to the proletarians of the more developed countries, who are also beginning to return to the road of resistance, to take the next step, to express their practical solidarity with the masses of the ‘third world’ by escalating their own combat against austerity and impoverishment, and in doing so exposing all the lies about capitalist freedom and democracy, of which they have a long and bitter experience. 

This is the leaflet we distributed on the demonstrations against education cuts on 29 January.

But the crisis isn’t confined to Britain. The sovereign debt crisis (i.e. investors beginning to lose faith in government bonds) continues to rumble on in Europe. Ireland has already been forced to adopt yet another austerity budget and growing political instability. Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Belgium are also facing serious difficulties that continue to undermine the Euro-area. As for China, some investment banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs) and hedge funds are already starting to reduce their exposure, amid worries that the Chinese miracle may turn out to be the biggest bubble of them all.

The crisis is thus clearly embedded in the capitalist system on a global scale. It is not the product of this or that government’s policy but the result of the economic mechanisms of capitalism itself, over which even the most competent government has limited control. Contrary to capitalist ideology (and that includes the so-called ‘left’), the recession was not caused by ‘greedy bankers’ or ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies. These elements are no more than consequences of far deeper structural issues at the heart of the economy.

The financial crisis and accompanying recession is not a new problem that has suddenly appeared over the last few years. Their roots can be traced at least as far back as the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the 70s, mainly left-wing governments employed the Keynesian policies that successfully held off recession during the post-war boom. However, these were finally shipwrecked on the cliffs of enormous budget deficits, inflation and recession.

In the 80s, the era of ‘Reaganomics’ and ‘Thatcherism’ there were the brutal recessions of 1981 and 1990. The ‘third way’ popularised especially by Blair and Clinton in the 90s was punctuated by the Mexican ‘Tequila’ Crisis of 94, the Asian Crisis of 97, the Russian Crisis of 98, and the complete breakdown in Argentina in 2000.

All governments are our enemy, not just this one!

What does this potted history of the crisis tell us? For one, it demonstrates that the crisis is historic in scale, a product of an entire social system in decline. The media usually blame the government in power for the crisis but it has been a constant companion of right and left-wing governments in every country, and so have the resulting attacks on our living standards. Whether it’s the wage freeze imposed by Labour’s ‘social contract’ in the 70s or the mass unemployment under Conservative governments in the 80s, the common denominator under all governments is that the working class has to pay for the crisis.

For all their fine words, once in power, every would-be government is confronted with the same economic reality which demands workers sacrifice their interests for the sake of ‘their’ country. From this perspective, all governments are the same and participation in elections or signing petitions begging the capitalist state to have mercy are all a waste of time. The only restraint on capital’s assault on the working class is its estimation of how far it can push us before we start pushing back.

But how can we fight effectively? Firstly, we must challenge the idea of each sector fighting its own corner: instead, we must try to struggle together wherever possible. In colleges and workplaces we can hold general meetings open to everyone, regardless of faculty, job or union, where real decisions can be made about the demands to raise and how to win them. We can send mass delegations to other colleges and workplaces inviting them to join in.

Demonstrations should become a vehicle for workers and students to discuss together, for reaching out to other workplaces under attack (local councils, postal sorting offices, etc.) and asking those workers to join them.

But ultimately, the severity of capitalism’s decline is such that even the most vigorous struggle can only bring about a temporary relief.Capitalism has no choice but to come back for more. Eventually, the struggle against austerity must go beyond immediate self-defence and begin to pose the question of replacing a decrepit capitalism with a new social system that will provide for the needs of all members of society.

This is not a utopia; the weapons of self-organisation and class consciousness forged in the defensive struggle will be the same ones that will one day be used to overthrow our exploiters and build a new world of human solidarity.

International Communist Current 27/1/11

The shock contraction of 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010 has been somewhat unnerving for British capitalism. Labour immediately seized on the figures as evidence that the Coalition cuts agenda was ill-advised and risked tipping the economy back into recession. Chancellor Osborne responded by saying that backing down on cuts would create worse turmoil in the markets and weaken the economy further.

While from the capitalist point of view there is a real debate on how to manage the economic situation, another aim of carrying out these debates is to obfuscate the true depths of the crisis now confronting the capitalist system. The ruling class present the recent economic disasters as the result of ‘greedy bankers’ and mistakes by government. In reality, however, the crisis is the product of the underlying mechanisms of capitalism. While government policy can influence or moderate the action of these mechanisms, it can never overcome them. The contradictions they seek to resolve are simply displaced – they change their form of expression but eventually return to haunt the ruling class.

Today’s economic situation did not simply fall from the sky. It is the result of decades of deterioration in capitalism’s underlying economic health and the successive failure of all the economic policies mobilised by the ruling class to try and prevent it.

The last phase of sustained growth experienced by capitalism was the post-war boom. While there had been recessions during the boom period, these were usually tackled successfully with ‘Keynesian’ state intervention. Recessions were short-lived and followed by vigorous growth.

While it was especially powerful in the West, the Eastern Bloc was also affected. The Soviet Union was at the height of its power, its economic and military power symbolised by the launch of Sputnik and then Yuri Gagarin into space.

This ‘economic miracle’ – as it was called in a number of countries – began to fizzle out by the late 60s. The first signs of stress were located in the Bretton Woods monetary system, based on dollar-gold convertibility. The US balance of payments had gone negative as early as 1950. Initially, this favoured the boom as the flood of dollars maintained liquidity but over time it began to erode confidence, a situation known as “Triffin’s Dilemma” after the economist who identified it. By 1967, the global monetary system was suffering serious stress and a run on Sterling was the first in a series of destabilising affairs. By 1971, Bretton-Woods was finished.

Monetary difficulties were accompanied by broader economic problems. The devaluation of the dollar badly hurt the oil producing countries and this (combined with the Yom Kippur war) produced the oil crisis of 1973, when the price of oil rose considerably. The overproduction incurred as a result of the crisis was symbolised by the steel crisis – the saturation of global steel markets. Two years of recession followed accompanied by the new phenomenon of ‘stagflation’ - a situation where inflation remains high despite low growth, unemployment and even recession.

The Keynesian consensus of the day appeared powerless to overcome the crisis and this opened the door to monetarism or neo-liberalism. This new policy, christened ‘Reaganomics’ or ‘Thatcherism’ after its most belligerent advocates, promised to overcome the chronic crisis (especially inflation) and return capitalism to the path of growth. Economically, this meant curtailing monetary growth; reducing taxation and state spending; deregulation (particularly of finance capital); and (in many countries) the withdrawal of the state from direct ownership of areas of the capitalist economy (privatisation).

Contrary to the ideology of both left and right, which presented this as a retreat of the state, it was nothing of the kind. The state retained regulatory control over the privatised industries and continued to control the metabolic rate of the economy through interest rates and monetary policy.

The state could no longer afford to resist the inexorable pressures of the market. For capitalism to function, it must be able to establish a sufficient rate of exploitation to allow it to grow. The working class had vigorously resisted the policy of wage cuts via inflation that the Left governments of the 70s had attempted to impose. In response, capitalism simply unleashed the competition that was a consequence of the international overcapacity engendered by a decade of stagnating growth. The market was allowed to do ‘economically’ what the state was unable to do politically. Entire swathes of manufacturing industry in the West were wiped out, with millions of workers laid off. Those that remained were forced to submit to a brutal haemorrhaging of wages and working conditions, and the amputation of the ‘social state’ – that is, reducing the provision of services such as health and education provided through the state while forcing the workers that provide them to do so more ‘efficiently’.

The decimation of manufacturing in the ‘mature’ capitalist economies had its natural counterpoint in the outsourcing to certain sectors of the ‘Third World’. Based on massive rates of exploitation, countries such as China were able to pick up the baton and became the workshops of the world. In the meantime, Western economies, through their financial dominance, could leech massive amounts of value from the new manufacturing centres. This capital naturally required reinvestment but despite the partial recovery from the disaster of the 70s, investment outlets were still inadequate. The deregulation of capital flows allowed enormous amounts of capital to flow quickly around the world in the search of profit and creating a vast pool of speculative finance.

This experimentation with the economic crack cocaine of speculation quickly developed into a full blown addiction. While bubbles and manias have always been a natural product of the capitalist cycle, they more and more came to dominate completely. This certainly provided a level of stimulus for the economy – although actual growth still lagged behind that achieved in the post-war boom – but at the price of increasing financial and monetary instability. 1987 saw the Stock Market Crash, swiftly followed by the Savings & Loan Crisis in the US, while 1990 saw the beginning of a new recession in the West. 1990 also saw crisis in Japan, until then a seemingly unstoppable growth engine, as it suffered the collapse of one of the biggest asset price bubbles in history. Consequently, Japan suffered a decade of stagnation and built up a staggering national debt, a situation that still haunts it today.

From the 90s onwards, currency meltdowns and financial crises became common-place. 1990 saw the collapse of Swedish and Finnish banking systems. In 1992, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism lurched into a crisis. Sterling was rapidly ejected and other currencies also came under serious speculative attack. Hard on the heels of the ERM crisis was the ‘Tequila Crisis’ of 94, another speculative attack on the Mexican Peso. The most serious financial panic, however, was undoubtedly the ‘Asian Crisis’ of 1997, a series of speculative attacks on various South East Asian currencies. This culminated in a storm that swept through the region and brought the vaunted economic ‘Tigers’ and ‘Dragons’ to their knees. This was swiftly followed by almost total economic collapse in Russia in 1998 – millions of people lost their life savings as the banking system toppled over and production ground to a halt. Argentina suffered a similar fate in 2000 while the US in 2001 saw the explosion of the dot.com bubble.

With each episode, the fiscal authorities responded with ever more powerful monetary stimulus, albeit with diminishing results. This has the effect of temporarily relieving the immediate crisis at the price of immediately stimulating another massive bubble. The rampant and malignant growth of ‘sub-prime’ finance that ultimately led to the credit crunch was thus the product of the loose monetary policy that followed the dot.com crash. This perfectly illustrates the chronic dilemma that has more and more confronted capitalism in the past few decades – pour monetary fuel onto the fire and risk the fire consuming everything or watch the fire be extinguished entirely.

There is no longer the possibility of capitalism resolving its economic stagnation in any progressive manner. Instead, all it can offer humanity is an ever more barbarous parade of economic breakdown, intractable and brutal wars, environmental catastrophe and social collapse. Only the class struggle of the proletariat offers an alternative. 

Ishamael  1/2/11

That the police have infiltrated the environmental and anti-globalisation protest movements over the past decade should come as no surprise to those living in ‘perfidious Albion’. In the 1840s the ‘Peelers’ had informers inside the Chartist movement (Thomas Powell) and the Cold War machinations of MI6 are legendary. The state infiltration of the Irish Republican movement has given us the ‘Stakeknife’ affair, where one of the IRA’s chief spy-catchers was himself a British agent for 25 years, with the British government allowing at least 40 people to be tortured and killed to protect his identity. (See WR 274, ‘British state organises terrorism in Ireland’).

The revelations in The Guardian during January that exposed four undercover agents of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), and the outraged response to them from the ‘democratic’ media and politicians, are nevertheless worthy of attention. Concerns about the first agent – PC Mark Stone (aka Mark Kennedy) – were first made public in October 2010 on Indymedia[1], but it was the collapse of the trial in early January of 6 activists accused of conspiring to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station that grabbed the headlines. Apparently Stone, wracked with remorse, had threatened to ‘go native’ and give evidence for the defence.

He obviously has plenty of evidence at hand. According to The Guardian, from the day his undercover operation began, “Kennedy would live a remarkable double life lasting more than seven years... Kennedy was feeding back detailed reports to his police commanders as he participated in, and sometimes even organised, some of the most high-profile demonstrations of the past decade. He took part in almost every major environmental protest in the UK from 2003, and also managed to infiltrate groups of anti-racists, anarchists and animal rights protesters. Using a fake passport, Kennedy visited more than 22 countries, taking part in protests against the building of a dam in Iceland, touring Spain with eco-activists, and penetrating anarchist networks in Germany and Italy.” (‘Mark Kennedy: A journey from undercover cop to ‘bona fide’ activist’, 10/01/11.) His success was down to having transport and money. Socially, he seemed to get on well with his targets, even having relationships with women, who rightly feel disgusted and betrayed by his duplicity.

The same cannot be said for PC Mark ‘Marco’ Jacobs who infiltrated the Cardiff Anarchist Network between 2005 and 2009. According to CAN, Jacobs’ key objectives were “to gather intelligence and disrupt the activities of CAN; to use the reputation and trust CAN had built up to infiltrate other groups, including a European network of activists; and to stop CAN functioning as a coherent group.” (‘They come at us because we are strong’, fitwatch.org). While Jacobs shared the first two objectives with Kennedy, it is the third that stands out, and was probably used by the police because the CAN was more politicised. The tactics used to achieve this aim are reminiscent of the Stalinist GPU within the Trotskyist movement during the 1930s: “He changed the culture of the organisation, encouraging a lot of drinking, gossip and back-stabbing, and trivialised and ran down any attempt made by anyone in the group to achieve objectives. He clearly aimed to separate and isolate certain people from the group and from each other, and subtly exaggerated political and personal differences, telling lies to both ‘sides’ to create distrust and ill-feeling. In the four years he was in Cardiff a strong, cohesive and active group had all but disintegrated. Marco left after anarchist meetings in the city stopped being held.” (ibid).

Activists from CAN approached The Guardian with their concerns, who took them to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) which confirmed that Jacobs was an officer with the NPOIU. Environmentalist activists in Leeds also had concerns about one Lynne Watson (and subsequently her partner) who had been involved in protest groups from 2004 to 2008. After Mark Kennedy was exposed in the autumn he apparently confirmed Watson was, like him, an NPOIU officer. The Leeds activists approached The Guardian, and the ACPO confirmed their suspicions, asking that she not be named until she was ‘extracted’ from her current operation. (See the ActivistSecurity.org statement on Lynn Watson[2]).

The subsequent inquiries into the Mark Stone case have shed light on the accountability of the various police agencies. The connection between the NPOIU and the ACPO is revealing. The ACPO is actually a private limited company. Before the Stone story broke, the NPOIU reported directly to the ACPO, not the government’s Home Office, meaning that it was not bound by the Freedom of Information Act. While we can have no illusions in a free and fair ‘democratic’ police force, the growing ‘privatisation’ of policing is interesting. The US government’s contracting out of security to private firms in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to have inspired the Labour Party’s approach to policing during the Blair administration. The NPOIU was formed in 1990, and is now part of the National Domestic Extremism Unit, responsibility for which has been handed to the Metropolitan Police.

Another element in the Kennedy affair has been the degree to which different European states – in this case Ireland, Iceland and Germany - cooperated in both using and covering up for Kennedy in his work of penetrating European activist and anarchist networks (wsws.org, 3/2/11, ‘Police agent Kennedy was active throughout Europe’).   

The technology of police surveillance has, of course, become much more sophisticated since Victor Serge wrote ‘What every revolutionary should know about state repression’ in 1926, basing himself on the activities of the Tsarist Okhrana. But the basic methods for infiltrating and sabotaging the work of ‘subversive’ elements remain substantially the same: get your agents inside as many of these dissident networks and organisations as possible; once inside, stir up personal animosities and rivalries; encourage all kinds of ‘extreme’ actions that give the state an excuse to smash the organisation. The work of Kennedy and his colleagues was directed mainly at a very amorphous activist milieu which presents numerous opportunities for infiltration and acts of provocation. But revolutionary communists should be under no illusion that the state, democratic or otherwise, will not use the same tricks against them.   

Colin, 27/01/11 

For its 26 March demonstration against government cuts the TUC are setting up a call in centre at their Congress House HQ in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police. Any information sent in by TUC stewards will go straight to the cops. Not only do the unions act with the police, they act as the police in workers’ struggles. They have also undermined any initiatives towards solidarity with the militant actions of students.

In Britain the student demonstrations and occupations at the end of 2010 were some of the most inspiring actions in twenty years. Not looking to a lead from the left or the unions, and not limiting their concerns to the education sector, the students’ initiatives often bypassed the ‘usual channels’ that lead to dead ends.

In 2011 we have seen a resumption in demonstrations and discussions on the way forward, partly re-energised by events in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. It would be misleading to overestimate the current strength of the movement, but it is significant that the forces of the left and the unions are struggling to play much of a role ... so far.

Unions stumble to catch up

Before Christmas RMT leader Bob Crow spoke about the need for “Industrial action, civil disobedience and millions on the streets” in response to government cuts. Since then he has conceded that the RMT and Aslef have not been able to co-ordinate any action on the railways. The energies of the unions have been put into building up a demonstration on 26 March where they hope a million will march three days after the next budget.

This demonstration, more than 3 months after the actions at the end of last year, is not aimed at the extension and self-organisation of the movement but at providing a safe, controlled outlet for all the anger at each new wave of austerity measures.

 Leftist groups like the Socialist Workers Party cry out that the “TUC must call a general strike.” That is to say that the unions must take over a movement that has so far shown little interest in or respect for the unions. At a local level, for example, if you’d been at a meeting on 20 January at Goldsmiths College in South London that involved students and others, the few mentions of the unions were just ignored. Members of a local leftist anti-cuts committee spoke about their campaign employing the usual clichés and set phrases, while the rest wrestled with real questions about where the movement was now and what were the next steps to take. A member of the SWP said it was necessary to call for an emergency general union meeting – not realising that he was actually in the presence of militant students who were already discussing and looking for a perspective for the development of the struggle without the straitjacket of the union.

There have been demonstrations since the start of the year but, for all the unions’ claims of supporting student initiatives, the unions have been unable to relate to the movement. At a demonstration in London on 29 January when at the beginning of the march a union speech started it acted as a cue for the march to move off. At the end of the march it seemed as though all the planned speeches were shelved.

Deliver us not unto Labour

 In describing events in Egypt for Socialist Worker (31/1/11) its editor remarks that “There is no plan. There is no one organisation responsible.”  This is true, and also applicable to Britain. But while revolutionary organisations encourage all tendencies toward self-organisation and towards the unification of the struggles of those already expressing their anger, the left and the unions have structures in place ready to sabotage the movement.

Not only are there calls for the TUC to call a General Strike but also to “Kick out Clegg and Cameron”. The implications of this are simple. Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union says that “While strike action is always a last resort, it would be the result of the government’s refusal to change course and its political choice to press ahead with unnecessary and hugely damaging cuts.” This claim that government cuts (following on from Labour’s) are an unnecessary political choice is false. The reason that the Lib-Con Coalition have undertaken cuts is for the same reasons Labour did: Britain is bankrupt. This has not of course stopped Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls from saying that the US economy, which hasn’t yet adopted the same policies as Clegg/Cameron, grew towards the end of last year. Yes, the resort to even greater debt is still being touted as a policy by the left – regardless of what it leads to in terms of the economy and in terms of the widespread poverty across the US. The ‘political choice’ that’s an ‘alternative’ to the Coalition is a Labour government. This is where the logic of the left leads.

A headline in Socialist World quotes an activist in Tunisia: “We need a clean trade union, which really represents the working class.” Clean or dirty, in Europe or North Africa, unions no longer represent the interests of the working class. In last year’s struggles in Britain, Greece, France and Italy we began to see what workers and students are capable of. Suspicion towards the unions and attempts to create new forms of organisation that are responsive to the needs of the struggle are entirely healthy. The routes marked out by unions and leftists can only serve to derail struggles.

Car 31/1/11

Political pundits are predicting meltdown for Fianna Fail at the Irish general election on 25 February, maybe losing more than half their seats. Considered the ‘natural party of government’ since coming to power in 1932, Fianna Fail has always had the most seats and the biggest share of the vote since 1933, and been in power for 61 of the last 79 years.

Whatever the result, all four of the main political parties in Ireland voted through the austerity measures required to get the €85 billion bail-out from the IMF and the EU. Whatever party or parties forms the next government, it will have little room for manoeuvre.

There will be €15 billion worth of cuts over the next 3 years, cutting, among many other things, the minimum wage, benefits and public sector jobs, following on from the billions already gouged from state expenditure. The economy has shrunk by over 20% in the past two years: even the most optimistic forecasts show only a marginal recovery for the foreseeable future. The 14% unemployment rate is the highest ever in absolute numbers and, of the 34 OECD states, only Spain and Slovakia have higher rates. Employment in the construction industry more than halved between 2008 and 2010. While thousands more are forecast to lose their jobs this year, a record 50,000 people are predicted to emigrate from Ireland in 2011, more than in any of the years of the 1980s’ recession.

Because the outgoing Fianna Fail/Green Party government is being widely blamed for the effects of the capitalist economic crisis in Ireland, other combinations of bourgeois parties are being backed to take over the running of the Irish state. The most popular prediction is for another Fine Gael/Labour Party coalition. This would be the seventh time this combination had been in charge. For all the supposed differences between the right wing Fine Gael and social democratic Labour, they have not found any difficulty in the past in enforcing austerity.

Some are predicting that, with a backlash against the ‘excesses’ of ‘free market’ capitalism, Labour and Sinn Fein will benefit, and be capable of forming a government in alliance with others. Should this unlikely first ever left wing Irish government transpire, the programmes of each party indicate that they will be perfectly capable of managing the state in the interests of Irish capitalism – for all that Gerry Adams continues to insist that he is a “subversive”.

The response of the working class in Ireland to the attacks on their conditions of life has been limited. In recent years there have been a number of massive, but union-dominated marches in response to different waves of austerity measures. The influence of the unions is still significant. Last year a number of major unions agreed a 4-year strike ban. While this is still holding there is still the potential for workers to see beyond the parliamentary games, beyond ‘responsible’ trade unionism, beyond the lies of Irish nationalism, and launch struggles in defence of their own class interests. 

Car 4/2/11 <?xml:namespace prefix = o />

Last month, when the proletariat and masses of large swathes of the Maghreb and the Middle East began rising up against their capitalist bosses, a Palestinian demonstration was mobilised in the West Bank to march behind the banners of Fatah to protest that their Palestinian Authority had been somehow wronged by the revelations that it was the “Third Israeli security arm” (US security coordinator for Israel and Palestine, General Keith Dayton). Or as World Revolution put it some time earlier, in December 2004 in fact, “Whereas the PLO was once an agent of the Russian bloc, (the) ‘Palestinian Authority’ was essentially created to act as an auxiliary force of repression for the Israeli army”.

The role of the PA, supported by the US, Britain and the EU as defenders of their imperialist needs and thus against the Palestinian masses, has been laid bare in 1600 documents leaked to al-Jazeera and published by The Guardian towards the end of January. The documents, some redacted in order to protect sources, have been authenticated by the newspaper and have been confirmed by recent Wikileaks’ cables coming from the US Consulate in Jerusalem and its embassy in Tel Aviv. They tell a story of the totally corrupt gangsters of the Authority, set up and funded by their American, British and Egyptian godfathers, begging their Israeli masters for a “fig-leaf” in order to give them some sort of credibility.

The documents detail the complete lies and sham of any ‘peace process’, a charade that been acted out for two decades now while the Palestinian masses have been going through humiliating misery, repression and war. Such is the nature of capitalist ‘peace’. The peace process in the Middle East has been nothing else except an expression of imperialism involving all the major powers and the local gangsters of the region. Amongst other things, the anti-working class nature of national liberation, in this case the chimera of a Palestinian state, is shown not only to be a pipe-dream for Palestinians but an ideological attack on the working class world-wide.

In any event, the documents show that only a very minimal number of refugees would be allowed to return to the homes from which they were ‘cleansed’, and are still being cleansed, in the interests of Greater Israel and the wider needs of American and British imperialism. They show a not so bizarre suggestion from US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, a couple of years ago, echoing views from the west after World War II where Jews were asked to re-settle in disease-infested swamplands of South America, that Palestinians could be re-settled in “Chile, Argentina, etc.”. The lawyer, ex-Mossad agent and then Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, “negotiating” with the PA, says: “... I am against law – international law in particular”. That there’s no peace process, that imperialism knows no law, international or otherwise, is also reflected in the lawyer Tony Blair being appointed as the “Quartet’s Middle East Peace Envoy”! There is a law at work though, the law of the jungle, and Chief PA negotiator, Saeb Erekat, sums it up well: “We have had to kill Palestinians... we have even killed our own people to maintain order and the rule of law”. Added to this, in an indication of the gangster nature of the “peace process”, is the stunning revelation that in a meeting in 2005 between the Palestinian Authorities’ Interior Minister, Nasser Youssef and Israeli Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, Mofaz put this question to Yousef regarding an al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade commander suspected of facilitating a bombing in Israel: “You know his address... Why don’t you kill him?” Documents show Britain’s role in setting up the security force of ‘trusted’ PA contacts in clandestine operations with direct lines to Israeli intelligence. The current head of MI6, appointed by the Labour government, was himself the British ambassador to Egypt in early 2000.

 Killing and torture is capitalist order, capitalist law. Further documents show that in response to the PA’s proposal to recognise all but one Israeli settlement on Palestinian land – an offer that was rejected out of hand by the Israelis – the Israelis’ proposed that Palestinians living in Israel could be “swapped”, ie cleansed, into the PA’s grip. Livni is clear that it’s been a long-time policy of Israel to take “... more and more land, day after day...” in order to create “facts on the ground”.

The Palestinian Authority, itself riven by corruption and rivalries which in turn are manipulated by the CIA, MI6 and the security services of Israel and Egypt, was also warned in advance of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, 2008/9.

Further, as The Guardian notes: “The papers highlight the far-reaching official British involvement in building up the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus in the West Bank”. They also show that MI6 concocted its Security Plan for Palestine working with Egyptian intelligence in the British embassy in Cairo. It used EU funds and British development ‘aid’ to help bankroll these forces. There can be little doubt that Britain provided arms and training as well. These forces are praised by the Israelis and the Americans, but “they are causing some problems ... because they are torturing people” (General K. Dayton).

None of this leads us to give the least credibility to Hamas – itself a co-negotiator with Israeli intelligence when needs must and a repressive and torturing force in its own enclave. Its imperialist role is clear from its support by Iran and Syria.

The whole “Partners for Peace” process has not only been a cruel joke on the Palestinian masses and a defence of imperialism but an ongoing ideological attack against the working class world-wide. But events are stirring and the pro-Palestinian, pro-Fatah demonstration mentioned above wasn’t the only one to take place in January. Human Rights Watch, 1.2.11, reports: “On January 20, a group of young people in Ramallah who wanted to demonstrate their support for the Tunisians were thwarted by Palestinian Authority police”. A week or so later, it reports: “Hamas authorities prevented demonstrations in the Gaza Strip aimed at showing solidarity with anti-government protestors in Egypt”. Hamas police arrested three women and, in a show of overwhelming force, threatened other would be protesters[1]. We see the clear unity of interest of all these bourgeois gangs: the PA, Hamas, the Israeli and Egyptian states in stifling protest, repressing dissent and defending ‘their’ territories. It’s a lesson that the workers’ history knows well from the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, Italy and France after WWII and Poland in 1980 – all examples of where imperialist forces dropped their mutual antagonisms in order to confront the threat of class struggle. In late January, this was also evidenced in the US facilitating, with Israeli agreement, Egyptian special forces being sent across the demilitarised Sinai in order to repress the uprising around the Rafah crossing and strengthen the border with Gaza; in this case, the US, Hamas, Fatah, Israel and Egypt all in perfect harmony in coordinating the forces of repression for the maintenance of the border and capitalist order. This ‘truce’ will only last as long as they are all worried about protest generalising; when it dies down they will be back to their usual tricks and rivalries. 

Baboon. 3/2/2011

Our comrade Martyn has lost a very painful struggle with cancer. His death in his early fifties is a heavy blow. Martyn was a close sympathiser of the ICC for nearly 30 years. He first made contact with us in the early 80s after experiencing at first hand the reactionary and dishonest character of the Trotskyist organisations (in this case the ‘Militant’ variety). After a brief phase of defining himself as a council communist he moved towards the politics of the ICC and remained convinced of our positions for the rest of his life. Even when he was very close to death he wanted to make it clear that he maintained his confidence in the ICC and has left to us his collection of political books.

For one reason of another – perhaps because Martyn had a tendency to underestimate the degree to which he really grasped our political positions, especially on the organisation question – he never became a member but he took a full part in many of our interventions, defended the organisation when it was under fire, and kept up a regular activity in his own home town of Leicester, selling the press, participating in political meetings and making contacts around him. During the 90s this activity bore fruit in the formation of a discussion circle in Leicester, which subsequently expanded to Birmingham and survives today as the Midlands Discussion Forum. Some of the ICC’s present membership in the UK initially passed through this circle but it always retained its character as an open forum where different tendencies within the working class could meet and debate; and this openness, along with the longevity of the circle, owes a lot to the role that Martyn played within the circle, above all the seriousness with which he approached political debate and clarification. 

Martyn’s interest in discussion was not limited to politics in the narrower sense but took in many wider areas such as anthropology, ancient history, art and music. He spent much of his working life as a printer, although more recently he went to university to study the history of art.He also became a father and was immensely proud of his son, who along with Martyn’s wife will be feeling this loss more than we can convey here. But Martyn will also be mourned by all who knew him as a comrade and a fighter for the communist revolution.

WR 7/2/11

100 years ago this August the British ruling class was forced to dispatch troops and warships to Liverpool to crush a near-insurrectionary general strike. The Lord Mayor of the city warned the government that “a revolution was in progress.”[1]

These extraordinary events were one of the high points of a whole series of struggles in Britain and Ireland before the First World War popularly known as ‘the Great Labour Unrest’. As the following article shows, these struggles were in fact a spectacular expression of the mass strike, and formed an integral part of an international wave that eventually culminated in the 1917 Russian revolution. Even today they are not widely known but remain rich in lessons for the struggles of today and tomorrow.

International context

Between 1910 and 1914, the working class in Britain and Ireland launched successive waves of mass strikes of unprecedented breadth and ferocity against all the key sectors of capital, strikes that blew apart all the carefully cultivated myths about the passivity of the British working class that had blossomed in the previous epoch of capitalist prosperity. 

Words used to describe these struggles in official histories include ‘unique’, ‘unprecedented’, ‘explosion’, ‘earthquake’…. In contrast to the largely peaceful, union-organised strikes of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the pre-war mass strikes extended rapidly and unofficially across different sectors – mines, railways, docks and transport, engineering, building – and threatened to go beyond the whole trade union machinery and directly confront the capitalist state.

This was the mass strike so brilliantly analysed by Rosa Luxemburg, its development signalling the end of capitalism’s progressive phase and the emergence of a new, revolutionary period. Although the fullest expression of the mass strike was in Russia in 1905, Rosa Luxemburg showed that it was not a specifically Russian product but “the universal form of the proletarian class struggle resulting from the present stage of capitalist development and class relations” (The Mass Strike). Her description of the general characteristics of this new phenomenon serves as a vivid description of the ‘Great Labour Unrest’: 

“The mass strike...flows now like a broad billow over the whole kingdom, and now divides into a gigantic network of narrow streams; now it bubbles forth from under the ground like a freshspring and now is completely lost under the earth.   Political and economic strikes, mass strikes and partial strikes, demonstrative strikes and fighting strikes, general strikes of individual branches of industry and general strikes in individual towns, peaceful wage struggles and street massacres, barricade fighting - all these run through one another, run side by side, cross one another, flow in and over one another - it is a ceaselessly moving, changing sea of phenomena...” (The Mass Strike).

Far from being the product of peculiarly British conditions, the mass strikes in Britain and Ireland formed an integral part of an international wave of struggles that developed throughout Western Europe and America after 1900: the 1902 general strike in Barcelona; 1903 mass strikes by railway workers in Holland; 1905 mass strike by miners in the Ruhr.... 

Revolutionaries have yet to draw out all the lessons of the British mass strikes – partly due to the sheer scale and complexity of the events themselves but also because the bourgeoisie has tried to quietly bury them as a forgotten episode.[2] It is no coincidence that to this day it the General Strike of 1926 and not the pre-war strike wave which has pride of place in the official history of the British ‘labour movement’: 1926 marked a decisive defeat, whereas 1910-1914 saw the British working class take the offensive against capital. 

The revival of struggles

The mass strike in Britain and Ireland can be traced to the depression of 1908-09. In the previous year the working class in Belfast had united across the sectarian divide to launch a general strike that had to be put down by extra police and troops.[3] In the north-east of England there were strikes by cotton workers, and engineering and shipbuilding workers. A railway strike was narrowly averted. When the depression lifted the explosion came.

The first phase of the mass strike had its centre of activity in the previously non-militant South Wales coalfield. Unofficial strike action hit a number of pits between September 1910 and August 1911, at its highest point involving around 30,000 miners. Initial grievances focused on wages and conditions of employment. Miners spread the strikes through mass picketing. There were also unofficial strikes in the normally conservative Durham coalfield in early 1910, and spontaneous strikes in the north-east shipyards.

In the second phase the focus shifted to the transport sector. Between June and September 1911 there was a wave of militant, unofficial action in the main ports and on the railways, which experienced their first national strike. In the ports, local union officials were taken by surprise as mass picketing spread the struggle from Southampton to Hull, Goole, Manchester and Liverpool and brought out workers in other dockside industries who raised their own demands. No sooner had the unions negotiated an end to these strikes than another wave of struggle hit the sector – this time centred on London, which had previously been unaffected. Unofficial action spread throughout the docks system against a union-negotiated wage deal, compelling officials to call a general strike of the port. Unofficial strikes continued during August, despite further wage agreements. 

As the London dock strike subsided, mass action switched to the railways with unofficial action beginning on Merseyside where 8,000 dockers and carters came out in solidarity after five days. By 15 August 70,000 workers were on strike on Merseyside. The strike committee set up during the seamen’s strike reconvened. After employers imposed a lock-out the committee launched a general strike which was only finally settled after two weeks of violent clashes with the police and troops. 

Meanwhile, unofficial action on the railways extended rapidly from Liverpool to Manchester, Hull, Bristol and Swansea, forcing rail union leaders to call a general strike – the first ever national rail strike. There was active support from miners and other workers (including strikes by schoolchildren in the main railway towns). When the strike was suddenly called off by union leaders after government mediation thousands of workers erupted with anger and militancy persisted.

During the winter of 1911-12 the main centre of the mass strike shifted back to the mining industry, where unofficial direct action led to a four-week national strike involving a million workers – the largest strike Britain had ever seen. Unrest among the rank and file grew after union leaders called for a return to work and strikes broke out again in the transport sector, with a London transport workers’ strike in June-July. This collapsed, partly due to lack of support from outside London, but during the summer of 1912 there were other strikes by dockers, for example on Merseyside.

Unlike the previous, relatively peaceful wave of struggles in 1887-93, workers showed themselves more than ready to use force to extend their struggle, and the pre-war mass strikes saw widespread acts of sabotage, attacks on collieries, docks and railway installations, and violent clashes with employers, strike-breakers, police and the military, in which at least five workers were killed and many injured.

Acknowledging the significance of the struggles, the bourgeoisie took unprecedented steps to suppress them. In the most famous case, 5,000 troops and hundreds of police were rushed to Liverpool in August 1911, while two warships trained their guns on the town. This culminated in ‘Bloody Sunday’: the violent dispersal of a peaceful mass workers’ demonstration by police and troops. In response, the workers overcame traditional sectarian divisions to defend their communities during several days of ‘guerrilla warfare’ which made use of barricades and barbed wire entanglements.

By 1912, the state was forced to take even more elaborate precautions, deploying troops against the threat of generalised unrest and putting whole areas of the country under martial law. Alarmingly for the bourgeoisie there were small but significant efforts by militants to carry out anti-militarist propaganda among the troops, including the famous 1912 Don’t Shoot leaflet, which prompted swift repression.

The working class now faced a concerted counter-attack by the capitalist class, which was determined to inflict a defeat as a lesson to the whole proletariat. In 1913 over 11 million strike days were lost, and there were more individual strikes than in any other year of the ‘Unrest’, in hitherto unaffected sectors like semi- and unskilled engineering workers, building workers, agricultural labourers and municipal employees; but this year saw a definite downturn, marked among other things by the defeat of the Irish workers in the Dublin Lock-out.

The trade union bureaucracy also began to regain control over the workers’ struggles. The formation of the ‘Triple Alliance’ in 1914, supposedly intended to co-ordinate action by the miners, railwaymen and transport workers, was in reality a bureaucratic measure to recuperate the spontaneous and unofficial action of the mass strikes, and prevent future outbreaks of uncontrollable rank and file militancy. Similarly, the formation of the National Union of Railwaymen as a single sector-wide ‘industrial union’ was not so much a victory for syndicalist propaganda or a response to changes in capitalist production as a manoeuvre by the union bureaucracy against unofficial militancy.

Nevertheless, discontent continued without any decisive defeats, and on the eve of the First World War the Liberal government minister Lloyd George shrewdly observed that with trouble threatening in the railway, mining, engineering and building industries,“the autumn would witness a series of industrial disturbances without precedent”.[4] Certainly the outbreak of war in 1914 came just at the right moment for the British bourgeoisie, effectively braking the development of the mass strikes and throwing the working class into deep - albeit temporary - confusion. But this defeat proved temporary, and as early as February 1915 workers’ struggles in Britain revived under the impact of wartime austerity, developing as an integral part of an international wave that eventually culminated in the 1917 Russian revolution.

The importance of the mass strikes

Fundamentally the pre-war mass strikes were a response by the working class to the onset of capitalist decadence, revealing all of the most important features of the class struggle in the new period:

-       a spontaneous, explosive character

-       a tendency towards self-organisation

-       rapid extension across different sectors

-       a tendency to go beyond the whole trade union machinery and directly confront the capitalist state.

More specifically, the mass strikes were a response to the growth of state capitalism and to the integration of the Labour Party and the trade unions into the state machine in order to more effectively control the class struggle. Among militant workers there was widespread disillusionment in parliamentary socialism as a result of the Labour Party’s loyal support for the Liberals’ repressive social welfare programmes, and the active role of the trade unions in administering them.

Most significantly, for the first time in its history the British working class launched massive struggles which went beyond and in some cases directly against the existing union organisations. National and local union leaders lost control of the movement at many points, particularly during the transport and dockers’ strikes (according to police reports, in Hull the unions lost control of the dockers’ strike altogether).

Union membership had been declining, partly due to growing rank and file dissatisfaction with the trade union leadership. The mass strikes resulted in a 50 per cent increase in union membership between 1910 and 1914, but, in contrast to the struggles of 1887-93, union recognition was not a major theme of these struggles, which instead saw unofficial strikes and direct action against those union leaderships who backed government ‘conciliation’ and were openly hostile to strike action: for example, railway union leader Jimmy Thomas was shouted down for defending the conciliation system, and at a mass meeting in Trafalgar Square in July 1914, militant building workers took over the platform and refused to let officials speak.

Enormous rank and file pressure was exerted even on the more militant leaders of the new general unions: on Merseyside, for example, even the syndicalist leader Tom Mann was heckled and shouted down by unofficial leaders and strikers, and it took a week of mass meetings to overcome resistance to a return to work.

The mass strikes also saw the growth of unofficial strike committees, some remaining after the defeat of strikes as political groupings demanding reform of the existing unions: for example, the Unofficial Reform Committee in South Wales which called for reform of the local miners’ union on ‘fighting lines’. A similar group emerged in the engineering union in 1910 which engaged in a violent battle with the existing leadership. Unofficial groups of militants also emerged among dockers in Liverpool, close to Jim Larkin and defending syndicalist ideas, while in London a syndicalist ‘Provisional Committee for the formation of a National Transport Workers Union’ was formed on the basis of discontent with the union leadership.

We can see in these developments a real deepening of class consciousness and the spread of important lessons about the new period among the masses of workers thrown into struggle, for example:

-       the perception of a change in the economic and political conditions for the class struggle

-       the need for direct action in defence of working class conditions

-       the inability of the trade unions, as presently organised, to effectively defend those interests and the need to struggle for control of the unions

-       the need for new forms of organisation more suited to the new conditions.

Above all, the struggles in Britain and Ireland formed a part of the international mass strike, and therefore had an importance for the whole working class. Characteristically, the British workers were not the first to enter into struggle, but their arrival on the scene as the oldest and most experienced fraction of the world proletariat added a huge weight to the movement, providing an invaluable example of struggle against a highly sophisticated bourgeoisie and its democratic mystifications. Inevitably the strikes also showed all the difficulties facing the working class in developing its immediate struggles into a revolutionary movement, especially as the change in period and the impossibility of a struggle for reforms within capitalism had not yet been definitively announced. But they showed the way forward. 

MH 31/1/11 

see

Revolutionaries and the mass strikes, 1910-1914: the strengths and limits of syndicalism [214]

This year was ushered in by a series of devastating floods: in Queensland, Australia, covering an area greater than France and Germany combined, in Sri Lanka and in the Philippines. There has been further flooding in the Australian state of Victoria, with Cyclone Yasi battering Queensland, and a murderous mudslide in Brazil.

These follow on from the huge number of disasters in 2010:

• starting with the earthquake in Haiti on 12 January, killing 230,000, injuring 300,000, making over a million homeless and leading directly to the cholera outbreak ravaging the country;
• storm Xynthia battered the Atlantic coast of France, killing 52 in France, Spain and Portugal;
• earthquake in Chile killing 521, making half a million homeless;
• the heatwave in Moscow, killing 15,000, destroying crops and putting up wheat prices up 47%;
• enormous floods in Pakistan;
• the Mexican Gulf oil spill following the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 workers on the oil platform and devastating the ecology of the area and the livelihoods of fishermen;
• the Hungarian aluminium spill causing 4 deaths and considerable ecological destruction.

So used to disaster are we becoming that if you look at the media since the New Year you could blink and miss the floods in the Philippines despite a death toll of 75 and £27bn of destruction to crops and infrastructure, and those in Sri Lanka with at least 40 dead and 300,000 displaced. You did not even need to blink to miss the Chinese drought, part of a general process of desertification: you have to look for it.

Capitalism’s responsibility for death and misery

There can be no doubt that the ruthless search for profit, heightened by fiercer competition as the economic crisis develops, is directly responsible for the deaths and ecological disasters caused by the BP oil spill and the Hungarian aluminium spill. But the same is true for the death and misery caused by seismic or climatic events. For example if we look at the earthquakes that took place in 2010 and compare the death toll and level of destruction, we can see the effects of a totally irresponsible policy of building cheaply without thought of what the buildings have to withstand. In New Zealand the earthquake of 7.1 on the Richter scale killed no-one, despite taking place close to the city of Christchurch, due to properly enforced seismic building regulations. In Haiti, a quake of similar magnitude, 7.3, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in Port-au-Prince where buildings have just been put up as quickly, cheaply and profitably as possible regardless of even basic safety, let alone the well known risk of earthquakes. Once built, even prestigious buildings were not maintained.

When we come to the floods and mudslides a pattern of ruling class responsibility also emerges. In Brazil there were over 800 deaths in the state of Rio de Janeiro as a result of heavy rains and mudslides, with another 30 in neighbouring states. These can be directly linked to the policy of building in unsafe areas, despite the fact that January rains are getting heavier. The ministry to monitor urban planning was only set up in 2003 and £4.4bn set aside for disaster containment 2 years ago. “… ‘These are emergency works purely to reduce the repetition of tragedies,’ says Celso Carvalho, the national secretary of urban programmes. ‘Our cities are very insecure because of the failure to apply urban planning’. Short-term, eye-caching public works are the focus. Winning elections is the aim. Dominated by this logic, the main driver of cities’ growth is profit, above everything else. That’s the reason why so many people live in high-risk areas, such as the slopes of mountains. Land in the city centres is too valuable for social housing; often governments don’t force the private sector to use land in this way.” (www.guardian.co.uk [218]).

But surely in Australia, a developed democratic country, things will be different… Let’s see the response to both the fires and floods that have hit the continent in recent years: “It’s noteworthy that the Baillieu government in Victoria has accepted a recommendation from the Black Saturday royal commission to buy back properties not only in areas directly affected by the fire, but also those considered to be in high-risk fire zones across the state. But many residents plan to rebuild or remain in these areas, assessing the risk of another devastating fire as lower than the amenity of life in a rural idyll. In Queensland, those in low-lying areas will be forced to make similar assessments in the wake of this flood. But for many, living in such areas is not a matter of choice, it is because the houses are affordable. And with the population of southeast Queensland burgeoning during the past two decades as families flee the high costs of Sydney, many new houses have been built in areas inundated in the 1974 flood.

Research fellow in geotechnical and hydrological issues at Monash University Boyd Dent says that planners can forget the lessons of history. ‘It’s absolutely essential that we take matters such as environmental geology and flood history into account in urban planning…The historical nature of these things means they aren’t in the front of mind for planners, but then events like this come along to remind us all’..” (www.theaustralian.com [219], 12/1/11)

In Brazil and Australia, as in the USA at the time of Hurricane Katrina, the poor have to take the risks while capital makes the profits. Lives of workers go into the ‘cost-benefit’ analysis along with any other capital investment.

The aftermath – lies, hypocrisy, neglect

“A ‘humanitarian crisis of epic proportions’ is unfolding in flood-hit areas of southern Pakistan where malnutrition rates rival those of African countries affected by famine, according to the United Nations. In Sindh province, where some villages are still under water six months after the floods, almost one quarter of children under five are malnourished while 6% are severely underfed, a Floods Assessment Needs survey has found. ‘I haven’t seen malnutrition this bad since the worst of the famine in Ethiopia, Darfur and Chad. It’s shockingly bad,’ said Karen Allen, deputy head of Unicef in Pakistan. The survey reflects the continuing impact of the massive August floods, which affected 20 million people across an area the size of England, sweeping away 2.2m hectares of farmland.” (Guardian 27/01/11)

Throughout the period of the floods, the Pakistani ruling class appeared completely impotent, unable to competently organise relief and aid for the millions of people affected. Pakistan consistently ranks as one of the poorest countries in the world and the vast scale of corruption in daily life has been well-documented elsewhere. However, the cynicism and hypocrisy are clear when it was reported that “The Pakistan military has kept up pressure on militants in the northwest despite the devastating floods that have required major relief efforts, a top US officer said on Wednesday. Vice Admiral Michael LeFever, who oversees US military assistance in Pakistan, said Islamabad has not pulled troops out of the fight against insurgents but has had to divert some aircraft needed for rescue efforts due to the massive flooding.” (thenews.com, 06/12/10). So the priorities are clear. In fact, these comments hide the fact that in the north western provinces of Pakistan there has already been an ongoing crisis due to the effects of the earthquake which struck the region in 2005, from which the region never fully recovered, and the ongoing (and increasing) military actions there against the Pakistani Taliban. These latter have also caused significant displacements of people: estimates range from 100,000 - 200,000 people. 

A similar picture emerges in Haiti a year after the quake: only 5% of the rubble has been cleared, less than 30% of promised aid has been paid. The population living in frayed tents and under tarpaulins in appalling conditions have fallen prey to a cholera epidemic, adding hundreds to the death toll. However, when the bourgeoisie want to build, even in poverty stricken Haiti where more than half the population survive on less than $1 a day, they can. The iron market in Port-au-Prince was rebuilt with earthquake protection within a year, funded by Irish billionaire Dennis O’Brien at a cost of $12 million. Whatever subjective charitable feelings he may profess, the hard truth is that capital will only build when it is profitable and as the New York Times noted “He is also keenly aware of the financial upside to getting Haiti up and running again. ‘As a company, we’re more aligned to the masses than to the elites,” Mr. O’Brien said of his interest in the market’.” (www.nytimes.com [220], 11/1/11). In fact as a BBC programme ‘From Haiti’s Ashes’ showed, the planned housing project that was supposed to go ahead alongside the rebuilding has been shelved in favour of political self-interest, replaying on a smaller scale the scramble for influence between the USA and France in the immediate aftermath of the disaster – a time when food and water seemed only able to get through to their own military personnel and NGOs. In fact aid given to disasters of the last 20 years has resulted not so much in relief of the population as in a 25% increase in the debt that will be serviced at the expense of that population (see https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2010/%252F331/Haiti [221]).

And in Sri Lanka “Victims of flooding in Sri Lanka have besieged a government office in the east of the country, accusing officials of holding back relief supplies. Windows were smashed as more than 1,000 people surrounded the office in a village in eastern Batticaloa district. Flood victims have told the BBC that some local politicians have been giving food and other aid to their supporters rather than the most needy.” (17/1/11, BBC online).

And this is without taking account of the effect of these disasters on rising food price rises and economic disruption, spreading the resulting misery far more widely.

The contribution of climate change

Monsoons, floods, heatwaves and droughts – all the extreme climate events call to mind the effects of climate change, of global warming. Climate change scientists have to be cautious about linking specific events to the overall picture. Nevertheless the British Met Office says the floods in Australia and the Philippines are linked to La Nina, and it is possible those in Brazil are also but the evidence is not clear (The Guardian 14/1/11). Similarly, the extreme events last summer, both the Moscow droughts and the Pakistan floods, were caused by the jet stream becoming fixed, making areas to the south much warmer (www.wired.co.uk [222]). In other words, there is considerable evidence that capitalism has even more responsibility for the natural disasters of the past 13 months through its impact of the world’s climate.

 The bourgeoisie has made one positive contribution, not through its useless climate conferences which either cannot make a real deal (Copenhagen) or make a deal that remains a dead letter (Kyoto), not through the fraud of aid, but in creating its own gravedigger, the working class. 

Alex 5/2/11

As the government rains attack after attack on our living standards – whether through cuts in health, education, benefits and local services, through redundancies in both the private and public sector, through tuition fee increases or the abolition of EMA, or through the steadily rising price of basic necessities – the TUC has for months now been telling us to fix our gaze on the Big Demo on the 26th March. The bosses of the trade unions have argued that a very large turn-out on the day will send a clear message to the Lib-Con government, which will start carrying out its spending review at the beginning of April, involving even more savage cuts than the ones we have seen already. It will show that more and more working and unemployed people, students and pensioners, in short, a growing part of the working class, are opposed to the government’s programme of cuts and are looking for an “alternative”.

And there’s no doubt that people are increasingly fed up with the argument that we have no choice but to submit to the blind laws of a crisis-torn economic system. No choice but to accept the tough medicine that the politicians assure us will, at some point in the future, make everything all right again. There’s also no doubt that a growing number of people are not content to sit at home and moan about it, but want to go out on the street, encounter others who feel the same way, and form themselves into a force that can make the powerful of the world take notice. This is what was so inspiring about the unruly student demonstrations and occupations in the UK at the end of last year; this is why the enormous revolts that are spreading throughout North Africa and the Middle East are such a hopeful sign.

But if these movements tell us anything, it’s that effective action, action that can actually force the ruling powers to back down and make concessions, doesn’t come about when people tamely follow the orders of professional ‘opposition’ leaders, whether people like El Baradei and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the TUC and the Labour Party in the UK. It comes about when people begin to act and think for themselves, on a massive scale – like the huge crowds who began to organise themselves in Tahrir Square, like the tens of thousands of Egyptian workers who spontaneously came out on strike to raise their own demands, like the students here who found new and inventive ways of countering police repression, like the school kids who joined the student movement without waiting for an endless round of union ballots…..

The TUC and the Labour Party, as well as the numerous ‘left wing’ groups who act as their scouts, are there to keep protest and rebellion inside limits that are acceptable to the status quo. The TUC didn’t say very much in the period from 1997 to 2010 while its Labour friends launched a vast array attacks on workers’ living standards, attacks that the present government is just continuing and accelerating. That’s because the social situation was different – there was less danger that people would resist. Now that this danger is growing, the ‘official’ opposition is stepping in with its expertise in controlling mass movements and keeping them respectable. The trade unions do this on a daily basis by handcuffing workers to the legal rigmarole of balloting and the avoidance of ‘secondary’ action. And now, with March 26, they are doing it on a national scale: one big march from A to B, and we can all go home. And during the march itself the TUC will be working directly with Scotland Yard to ensure that the day goes entirely to their jointly agreed plans.

True, some of the more radical trade unions and political groups call for more than a one-off march: they want the TUC to ‘coordinate strike action’, even call a ‘general strike’. But these approaches just reinforce the idea that the best we can hope for is to get the official opposition to act more effectively on our behalf, rather than organising and spreading the struggle ourselves.      

If there is to be a real opposition to the ruling class and its assault on our lives, it’s not going to be content with one big demo: it has to be part of a much wider movement of strikes, occupations, demonstrations and other actions, controlled directly through mass meetings and willing to defy laws aimed at rendering resistance passive and divided.

And when we are taking part in demonstrations, whether local rallies or big national marches, let’s use them to make links between different centres of resistance, different sectors of the working class. Let’s organise our own street meetings where instead of listening to celebrity speakers we can freely exchange experiences from our own struggles and prepare for the battles of the future. Let all those who stand for independent, self-organised workers’ struggles use them as an opportunity to meet up and decide on how to connect to wider numbers of their class.

And let’s also use such occasions to challenge not only the deadening methods advocated by the official opposition, but also the false perspective they offer us for the future. The TUC ‘alternative’ of ‘jobs, growth, justice’, for example, is completely misleading: this system is in an irreversible crisis and can’t guarantee anyone’s job; even if was possible without vast increases in state debt, capitalist growth can only be based on increasing workers’ exploitation and further despoiling the environment; and a society based on the exploitation of one class by another can never achieve justice. In sum: inside of capitalism, there is no ‘alternative’ except increasing austerity and barbarism. The only real alternative is to fight against this regime of capitalism and in doing so prepare the ground for a total transformation of society. 

WR 5/3/11

The unfolding events in Libya are extremely difficult to follow. One thing is clear though: the population has suffered weeks of repression, fear and uncertainty. Maybe thousands have died initially at the hands of the regime’s repressive apparatus, but now increasingly they are caught in the crossfire as the government and opposition struggle for control of the country. What are they dying for? On the one hand, in order to maintain Gaddafi’s control of the state, and on the other in order to put the Libyan National Council - the self proclaimed “voice of the revolution”- in control of the whole country. The working class in Libya and beyond is being asked to choose between two sets of gangsters. In Libya they are being told they should actively take part in this growing civil war between rival parts of the Libyan bourgeoisie over control of the state and economy. In the rest of the world we are encouraged to support the brave struggle of the Opposition. Workers have no interest in supporting either faction.

The events in Libya started as a mass protest against Gaddafi, inspired by the movements in Egypt and Tunisia. The impetus for the explosion of anger in many cities appears to have been the brutal repression of the first demonstrations. According to The Economist 26/2/11, the initial spark was the demonstration in Benghazi on 15February by about 60 youths. Similar demonstrations took place in other cities and were all met by bullets. Faced with the murder of scores of young people, thousands took to the streets in desperate battles with the forces of the state. These struggles witnessed actions of great courage. The population of Benghazi, hearing that mercenaries were being flown into the airport, descended upon the airport and its defenders en masse and took it over, despite heavy losses. In another action civilians commandeered bulldozers and other vehicles and stormed a heavily armed barracks. The population in other cities drove out the repressive forces of the state. The only response of the regime was ever more repression, but this resulted in the break-up of much of the armed forces as soldiers and officers refused to carry out orders to kill protesters. One private shot dead a commanding officer after he issued a shoot-to-kill command. Initially this seems to have been a genuine explosion of popular anger faced with brutal repression and increasing economic misery, especially on the part of the urban youth.

Why have things taken a different turn in Libya?

The deepening economic crisis and a growing refusal to accept repression has been the wider background for the movements in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. The working class and general population has suffered years of brutal poverty and exploitation as the ruling class has accumulated vast wealth.

But why has the situation in Libya been so different to that in Tunisia and Egypt? In those countries, while there was repression, the main means for bringing the social discontent under control was the use of democracy. In Tunisia the growing demonstrations by the working class and wider population against unemployment was diverted almost overnight into the dead end of who would replace Ben Ali. Under the guidance of the US military the Tunisian military told the president to sling his hook. It took a bit longer in Egypt to get Mubarak to go but even his resistance ensured that the discontent was focused on getting rid of him. Importantly, one of the things that finally pushed him was the outbreak of strikes demanding better conditions and wages. This showed that while workers had participated in the massive demonstrations against the government they had not forgotten about their own interests and were not willing to put them to one side in the name of giving democracy a chance.

In both Egypt and Tunisia the military is the backbone of the state and was able to put the interests of the national capital above the interests of particular cliques. In Libya the military does not have the same role. The Gaddafi regime has deliberately kept the military weak over the decades, along with any other part of the state which may have been a power base for rivals. “Gaddafi tried to keep the military weak so they could not topple him, as he toppled King Idris” said Paul Sullivan, a North Africa expert at the Washington-based National Defense University. The result is “a poorly trained military run by poorly trained leadership that are on the ropes, not exactly personally stable, and with a lot of extra weapons floating around.” (Bloomberg 2/3/11) This meant that the only answer the regime has to any social discontent is naked repression.

The very brutality of the state’s response swept the working class up in an outbreak of desperate anger at the sight of their children being massacred. But those workers who joined the demonstrations did so largely as individuals: despite the great courage it took to stand up to Gaddafi’s guns, workers were not able to put forward their own class interests.

In Tunisia, as we have said the movement began within the working class and the poor against unemployment and repression. The proletariat in Egypt entered into the movement after having engaged in several waves of struggles over recent years, and this experience has given it confidence in its ability to defend its own interests. The importance of this was demonstrated at the end of the demonstrations when a wave of strikes broke out (see the article on page 3). 

The Libyan proletariat entered into the present conflict in a weak position. There were reports of a strike in one oilfield. But it is impossible to tell if there have been any other expressions of working class activity. There may have been, but we have to say that the working class as a class is more or less absent. This means that the class from the beginning has been vulnerable to all of the ideological poison generated by a situation of chaos and confusion. The appearance of the old monarchist flag and its acceptance as the symbol of the revolt in only a matter of days marks how deep this weakness is. This flag went along with the nationalist slogan of a “free Libya”. There have also been expressions of tribalism, with support or opposition to the Gaddafi regime being determined in some cases by regional or tribal interests and tribal leaders using their authority to put themselves at the head of the rebellion. There is also appears to be a strong presence of Islamism with the chant of “Allahu Akbar” being heard on many demonstrations.

This morass of ideologies has exacerbated a situation where tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of foreign workers have felt the need to flee the country. Why would foreign workers line up behind a national flag, no matter its colour? A real proletarian movement would have incorporated the foreign workers from the beginning because the demands would have been common ones: better wages, working conditions and the end of repression for all workers. They would have united because their strength was their unity, regardless of nation, tribe or religion.

Gaddafi has made full use of all of this poison to try and get workers and the population to support him against the alleged threat posed to his ‘revolution’: foreigners, tribalism, Islamism, the West.

A new regime in waiting

The majority of the working class hates the regime. But the real and gravest danger for the working class is falling in behind the ‘opposition’. This opposition, with the new ‘National Council’ more and more assuming a position of leadership, is a conglomeration of various fractions of the bourgeoisie: former members of the regime, monarchists, etc, along with tribal and religious leaders. All of them have taken full advantage of the fact that this movement has no independent proletarian direction to impose their desire to replace Gaddafi’s management of the Libyan state with their own.

Ehe National Council is clear about its role: “The main aim of the national council is to have a political face ... for the revolution,” “We will help liberate other Libyan cities, in particular Tripoli through our national army, our armed forces, of which part have announced their support for the people,” (Reuters Africa 27/2/11) “There is no such thing as a divided Libya” (Reuters 27/2/11). In other words their aim is to maintain the present capitalist dictatorship but with a different face.

The opposition is not united though. Gaddafi’s former Justice Minister Mustafa Mohamed Abud Ajleil announced the formation of a provisional government at the end of February with the support of some former diplomats. It was based in Al-Baida. This move was rejected by the National Council based in Benghazi.

This shows that within the opposition there are deep divisions which will explode eventually if they manage to get rid of Gaddafi or when these ‘leaders’ scramble to save their skins if Gaddafi manages to stay in power.

The National Council has a better public face. It is fronted by Ghoga, a well-known human rights lawyer and is thus not too tainted with links to the former regime, unlike Ajleil. All the better to sell this gang to the population.

The media has made a lot of fuss about the committees that have sprung up in cities, town and regions where Gaddafi has lost control. Many of these committees seem to have been self-appointed by local dignitaries, but even if some of them were direct expressions of the popular revolt, it looks as though they have been pulled into the bourgeois, statist framework of the National Council. The National Council’s effort to establish a national army means only death and destruction to the working class and the population as a whole as this army battles it out with Gaddafi’s forces. The social fraternization that originally helped to undermine the regime’s efforts at repression will be replaced by pitched battles on a purely military front, while the population will be called on to make sacrifices to ensure that the National Army can fight.

The transformation of the bourgeois opposition into a new regime is being accelerated by the increasingly open backing of the major powers: the US, Britain, France, Italy etc. The imperialist gangsters are now distancing themselves from their former buddy Gaddafi in order to ensure that if a new team comes to power they will hold some sway over it. The support will be for those who will fit in with the imperialist interests of the big powers.

What appears to have begun as a desperate response to repression by parts of the population has very rapidly been used by the ruling class in Libya and internationally to their own ends. A movement that began as a furious effort to stop the massacre of young people has ended up as another massacre of the young, but now in the name of a Free Libya.

The proletariat both in Libya and beyond can only respond by increasing its determination not to allow itself to be dragged into bloody struggles between factions of the ruling class in the name of democracy or a free nation. In the coming days and weeks, if Gaddafi hangs on to power the international chorus of support for the opposition in this civil war will grow ever louder. And if he goes, there will be an equally deafening campaign about the triumph of democracy, people’s power and freedom. Either way workers will be asked to identify with the democratic face of capitalism’s dictatorship. 

Phil 5/3/11

If timing is the essence of comedy then David Cameron’s long-planned arms sales trip around the Gulf and the Middle East couldn’t have worked out better. But supplying butchers with the means to attack their populations is far from comic.

The disgusting nature of this sinister farce was further reinforced by his attendance at a ceremony in Kuwait, along with ex-Prime Minister John Major, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first Gulf War in which hundreds of thousands of innocents were killed by the most lethal weaponry of the advanced democracies.

At the same time as hundreds, perhaps thousands were being killed in Libya by weapons sold to Gaddafi under both Labour and Tory governments, Cameron, who briefly paused for a hastily arranged photo opportunity in Tahrir Square, along with eight executives from the defence and aerospace industries, hawked their deadly goods around to their gangster clientèle. In response to criticism Cameron, stretching words almost beyond comprehension, said that not to provide these Arab regimes with arms was “denying people their basic rights”, “racism” and undemocratic. The Gaddafi regime had been sold, amongst other things, up until very recently, sniper rifles, tear-gas grenades, crowd control weapons, small arms ammunition, stun grenades, anti-aircraft cannon, mortars, armoured personnel carriers, military aircraft, gun silencers, weapons sights, body armour and military aviation technology. These were all, in the words of the Foreign Office, “covered by assurances that they would not be used in human rights repression”.

The UK provided by far the largest pavilion at the last Libyan arms fair and last week, at the Abu Dhabi arms fair, 10% of all the global exhibitors were British. Minister Gerald Howarth, leading the delegation, declared: “We have ambitious plans”. At the same time, Labour’s defence spokesman, Jim Murphy, whose government undertook wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and several other ‘theatres’, trying to make a political point but showing the unity of the British bourgeoisie, said: “The UK has a responsibility beyond its borders and needs to support force”.

It was the Labour government that embraced and strengthened the Gaddafi regime and conducted arms sales to Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Iraq, Morocco, Israel, Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt. And it was the Labour government that sat on any enquiry into BAE’s al-Yamanah Saudi arms deal citing “national interest”. Now that the LibDems have a taste of power they’ve slunk away from the moral high ground. Business Secretary Vince Cable is complicit in the deals and Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, apparently in charge of the country while Cameron was off flogging death and destruction, goes skiing while people protesting for basics, bystanders and children were being murdered by British-supplied arms.

The crimes and hypocrisy of these accomplices to massacres are limitless and Cameron has even proposed selling arms to the Libyan “rebels”, by whom he means the Libyan government in waiting, should Gaddafi fall. And while condemning the use by the regime of “excessive violence”, that is using the weapons it provided for that purpose, Britain has also fallen in behind the calls from the so-called ‘international community’ for sanctions and humanitarian assistance - which have been shown in the past to be weapons in the interests of the competing imperialisms implementing them.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox has called for “enhanced defence exports” with “the MoD ... at the forefront of the government export-led growth strategy” and the trade minister Lord Green (sitting next to Vince Cable) said that ministers would be “held accountable” if companies fail to secure deals. The only arms deal that has been blocked in the last couple of years has been the $65 million sale of helicopters, assault rifles, armoured cars and machine guns to the small African state of Swaziland. At the time the British government claimed that this was because these arms could be used for “possible internal repression”. But US embassy documents released by Wikileaks show that the Americans stopped it because of “end user concerns”, i.e., that the weapons were likely to end up in Iran. This didn’t stop the Campaign Against Arms Trade from welcoming the move as a refusal “to sell arms to a known human rights abuser” and this when British arms to war-torn Africa amounted to over a billion pounds in the last year.

Britain of course is not alone in this deadly trade, all major countries are involved and global arms sales have risen 60% since 2002 to total $400 billion (based on official figures) in 2009.

Britain’s BAE Systems was the second largest company involved in that period with its $33.25 billion just behind the USA’s Lockheed Martin. But it is Britain’s role in backing and arming the Gaddafi regime which is particularly nauseous in the present circumstances; feted by the Labour government, financiers, academics and the royal family, the Coalition government was about to continue the work of grooming Saif al-Islam Gaddafi as its place-man in the murderous regime.

Russia, among others, has also provided the regimes with weapons and France, in competition with the US and Britain in the Mediterranean, Maghreb and the Middle East has provided Gaddafi with anti-tank missiles, military telecommunications and maintenance for his Mirage fighter-bombers. The French ruling class has nothing to learn from Perfidious Albion. It has already sent two planeloads of so-called ‘humanitarian’ aid which the French Prime Minister says “will be the beginning of a massive operation of humanitarian support for the populations of the liberated territories”.

It’s not just in supplying the weaponry to these murderous regimes that Britain profits economically and strategically. Various special forces supply training to the killers as an adjunct to the arms trade and, unsurprisingly, there’s absolutely no scruples here. One of the most notable achievements of the SAS was in training the cadres of Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1960s. More recently, we’ve seen the role of West Mercia and Humberside police officers in training associates of the death squads of the Bangladeshi government.

And, finally, it is worth recalling that the weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological, that Gaddafi was supposed to give up in return for his embrace by the ‘international community’ are still intact in the state’s bunkers and a possible threat to large numbers of people in the region.  

Baboon 1/3/11

The article below was written in mid-February, during a wave of workers’ strikes which spread to numerous sectors. Although the governing military responded with stern warnings to the strikers,many of their demands were quickly acceded, thus avoiding a head-on confrontation. The strike wave seems now to have abated, but the Egyptian working class has kept its fighting spirit intact.Furthermore, as the article emphasises, the tendency towards the mass strike, which can certainly be discerned in this recent movement, unfolds on a historic scale, so that particular expressions of it contribute to the development of much deeper and wider movements in the future.

Article published here [230]

At the very moment that Ireland was negotiating its rescue plan, the International Monetary Fund admitted that Greece would not be able to fulfil the plan that they and the European Union devised in April 2010. Greece’s debt would have to be restructured, even if they didn’t use this word. According to D. Strauss Khan, the boss of the IMF, Greece must be allowed to repay its debt not in 2015 but in 2024. That is, on the Twelfth of Never, given the course of the present crisis in Europe. Here is a perfect symbol of the fragility of some if not most European countries undermined by debt.

This concession to Greece has been accompanied by new austerity measures. After the austerity plan of April 2010 - which was financed by the non-payment of two months of retirement, the lowering of indemnities in the public sector, and price rises resulting from an increase in tax on electricity, petrol, alcohol, tobacco, etc - there are also plans to cut public employment.

A comparable scenario unfolded in Ireland where the workers were presented with a fourth austerity plan. In 2009 public sector wages were lowered between 5 and 15%, welfare payments were suppressed and recruitment frozen. The latest austerity plan includes reducing the minimum wage by 11.5%, reducing welfare payments, eliminating 24,750 state jobs and an increase in sales tax from 21 to 23%. For these two countries, these violent austerity plans presage future measures that will force the working class and the major part of the population into an unbearable poverty.

The incapacity of new countries (Portugal, Spain, etc) to pay their debts is shown by their attempt to avoid the consequences by adopting draconian austerity measures and preparing for more, like in Greece and Ireland.

What are the austerity plans trying to save?

Naturally, these policies are not intended to relieve the poverty of the millions who are the first to suffer the consequences. The bourgeoisie’s biggest fear is of a domino effect i.e. that if the weakest countries default, the effect will quickly spread throughout the system.

At the root of the bankruptcy of the Greek state is a considerable budget deficit due to an exorbitant mass of public spending (armaments in particular) that the fiscal resources of the country, weakened by the aggravation of the crisis in 2008, cannot finance. In Greece, it is clear that a country of 11 million people, whose GNP in 2009 was 164 billion euros, will not be able to pay back a loan of 85 billion euros. As for the Irish state, its banking system had accumulated a debt of 873% (ie nearly nine times!) GDP which the worsening of the crisis had made impossible to cover. As a consequence, the banking system had to be largely nationalised and the debt was transferred to the state. Accordingly, the Irish state found itself in 2010 with a public deficit corresponding to 32% of GDP!

In both cases, faced with an insane level of indebtedness of the state or of private institutions, it is the state which must assume the integrity of the national capital by showing its capacity to reimburse the debt and pay the interest on it.

The potential for a ‘domino effect’ lies in the fact that it is the banks of the major developed countries who held the colossal debts of the Greek and Irish states. There are different opinions concerning the level of the claims of the major world banks on the Irish state. Let’s take the ‘average’: “According to economic daily Les Echos de Lundi, French banks have a 21.1 billion euro exposure to Ireland, behind the German banks (46 billion), British (42.3 billion) and American (24.6 billion)”. And concerning the exposure of the banks by the situation in Greece: “The French institutions are the most exposed with 55 billion euros in assets. The Swiss banks have invested 46 billion, the Germans 31billion”. The non-bailout of Greece and Ireland would have put the creditor banks in a very difficult situation, and thus the states on which they depend. It would have been even more the case for countries in a critical financial situation (like Spain and Portugal) which are also exposed in Greece and Ireland and for whom such a situation would have proven fatal.

Worse, a failure to bailout Greece and Ireland would have unleashed a crisis of confidence and a stampede of the creditors away from these countries, guaranteeing bankruptcy of the weakest of them, the collapse of the euro and a financial storm that would make the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008 look like a mild sea breeze. In other words, the financial authorities of the EU and the IMF came to the rescue of Greece and Ireland not to save these two states, still less the populations of these two countries, but to avoid the meltdown of the world financial system.

In reality, it is not only Greece, Ireland and a few other countries in the South of Europe whose financial situation has deteriorated. The following figures show the level of total debt as a percentage of GDP (January 2010): “470% for the UK and Japan, gold medals for total indebtedness; 360% for Spain; 320% for France, Italy and Switzerland; 300% for the US and 280% for Germany”.The levels of indebtedness of all these states show that their commitments exceed to an absurd degree their ability to pay. Calculations have been made which show that Greece needs a budget surplus of at least 16% - 17% to stabilise its public debt. In fact, all these countries are indebted to a point where their national production won’t allow the repayment of their debt.

In other words these states and private institutions hold debt that can never be honoured. Given that the rescue plans have no chance of success, what else is their significance?

Capitalism can only survive thanks to plans for permanent economic support

Nevertheless the Euro zone countries have another difficulty: its states are unable to create the monetary means to ‘finance’ their deficits. This is the exclusive preserve of the European Central Bank. Other countries like the UK and the US, equally indebted, do not have this problem since they have the authority to create their own money.

Such support to the financial sector, which finances the real economy, can reduce the impact of austerity which is why all those who are able to print money are doing so. The US is going furthest in this direction: Quantitative Easing Nº2, creating $900 billion.

The fact that the dollar is an international reserve currency allows the US to pump out dollars at a level that would cripple its rivals should they attempt such a strategy. A further round of ‘QE’ cannot be ruled out.

US fiscal and monetary measures are, therefore, far more aggressive than in European countries but even the US is now trying to drastically slash its budget deficit, as illustrated by Obama’s proposal to block the wages of federal employees. In fact one finds in every country in the world such contradictions revealed in the policies adopted.

The bourgeoisie has exceeded the limits of indebtedness that capitalism can sustain

As Marx showed, capitalism suffers genetically from a lack of outlets because the exploitation of labour power necessarily leads to the creation of a value greater than the outlay in wages, because the working class consumes much less than it produces. Up and till the end of the nineteenth century, the bourgeoisie had to offset this problem by the colonisation of non-capitalist areas where it forced the population, with various means, to buy the merchandise produced by its capital. The crises and wars of the twentieth century illustrate that this way of answering overproduction, inherent to capitalist exploitation, was reaching its limits. In other words, non-capitalist areas of the planet were no longer sufficient for the bourgeoisie to realise the surplus product that was needed for enlarged accumulation. The deregulation of the economy at the end of the 1960s, manifested in monetary crises and recessions, signified the quasi-absence of the extra capitalist markets as a means of absorbing the surplus capitalist production. The only solution henceforth has been the creation of an artificial market inflated by debt. It has allowed the bourgeoisie to sell to states, households and businesses without the latter having the real means to buy.

We have often shown that capitalism has used debt as a palliative to the crisis of overproduction that has ensnared it since the end of the 1960s. But we should not confuse debt with magic. Actually debt must be progressively reimbursed and the interest paid systematically, otherwise the creditor will not only stop lending but risk bankruptcy himself.

Now the situation of a growing number of European countries shows they can no long pay the part of the debt demanded by their creditors. In other words these countries must reduce their debt, in particular by cutting expenses, when 40 years of crisis have shown that the increase of the latter was an absolutely necessary condition to avoid a world recession. All states, to a greater or lesser degree are faced with the same insoluble contradiction.

The financial storms shaking Europe at the moment are thus the product of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism and illustrate the absolute impasse of this mode of production.

Developing inflation

At the very moment when most countries have austerity plans that reduce internal demand, including for basic necessities, the price of agricultural raw materials has sharply increased. More than 100% for cotton in a year; more than 20% for wheat and maize between July 2009 and July 2010 and 16% for rice between April-June 2010 and the end of October 2010. Metals and oil went in a similar direction. Of course, climatic factors have a role in the evolution of the price of food products, but the increase is so general that other causes must be at play. All countries are preoccupied by the level of inflation that is increasing in their economies. Some examples from the ‘emerging countries’:

- Officially inflation in China reached an annual rate of 5.1% in November 2010 (in fact every specialist agrees that the real figures for inflation in this country is between 8 and 10%)

- In India inflation reached 8.6% in October

- In Russia it was 8.5% in 2010

The development of inflation is not an exotic phenomenon reserved for the emerging countries. The developed countries are more and more concerned: a 3.3% rate in November in the UK was seen as worrying by the government; 1.9% in virtuous Germany caused disquiet because it occurs alongside rapid growth.

Inflation is not always the result of vendors raising their prices because demand exceeds supply and therefore carries no risk of losing sales. The printing of money, that is the issuing of new money when the wealth of the national economy does not increase in the same proportion, leads inevitably to a depreciation of the money in circulation and thus to an increase in prices. This is the natural result of Quantitative Easing.

There is also the question of speculation. As profitable outlets decline, capitalists no longer invest directly in production that can tie up capital for long periods with little return. Instead, they keep capital liquid; ready to be invested in any activity that looks likely to make a profit. When prices of a particular asset or commodity begin to rise for any reason, the capitalists pour money into the market anticipating further price rises so they can sell at profit. For example, a bad wheat harvest suggests prices will rise so capitalists buy up large amounts of wheat hoping to make a killing. This very action pushes the prices up further, which encourages other capitalists to invest, pushing the price up even more! Increasing the money supply gives more cash to invest and accelerates the process even further.

The problem is that a good part of these products, in particular agricultural products, are also commodities consumed by vast numbers of workers, peasants, unemployed, etc. Consequently, as well as a lowering of income, a great part of the world population is hit by the rise in the price of rice, bread, clothes, etc.

Thus the crisis which obliges the bourgeoisie to save its banks by means of the creation of money leads the workers to suffer two attacks:

- the lowering of their wages

- the increase in the price of basic commodities

A similar process occurred in 2007 –2008 (just before the financial crisis) triggering hunger riots in many countries. The consequences of the present price explosion have immediately led to the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria.

The level of inflation won’t stop rising. According to Cercle Finance from 7December, the rate of 10 year T bonds has increased from 2.94% to 3.17% and the rate of 30 year T bonds has increased from 4.25% to 4.425%. That clearly shows that the capitalists anticipate a loss of the value of the money they invest and thus demand a higher rate of return on it.

The tensions between national capitals

Contrary to the pious intentions published by the recent G20 in Seoul, protectionist tendencies are clearly at work today behind the euphemism of ‘economic patriotism’. It would be too tedious to list all the protectionist measures adopted by different countries. Let us simply mention that the US in September 2010 was taking 245 anti-dumping measures; that Mexico from March 2009 had taken 89 measures of commercial retaliation against the US and that China recently decided to drastically limit the exportation of its ‘rare earths’ needed for a lot of high technology products.

But, in the present period, it’s currency war which will be the major manifestation of trade war. Increasing the money supply also allows national capitals to make their products cheaper on the world market, another benefit to countries using this policy. Other countries like China, deliberately undervalue their currency to maintain exports.

However, despite the trade war, the different countries have agreed to prevent Greece and Ireland from defaulting on their debt. The bourgeoisie is obliged to take very contradictory measures, dictated by the total impasse of its system.

What solutions can the bourgeoisie propose?

Why, in the catastrophic situation of the world economy do we find articles entitled ‘Why growth will come’ or ‘The US wants to believe in the economic recovery’ ? Such headlines seek to maintain the illusion that the bourgeoisie’s economic and political authorities still have a certain mastery of the situation. In fact, the policy options available, in so far as they are effective, bring with them their own dangerous side effects:

- creating money can stimulate the economy and help reduce deficits (when these funds are directed to buying state bonds) but creates currency instability and unleashes dangerous inflationary trends.

- austerity measures can reduce debt and make the working class pay for the crisis, but they can also curtail economic activity and exacerbate the tendency for depression and breakdown, which actually makes the debt problem worse and necessitating further austerity. This is the situation Ireland now finds itself in.

In fact, many governments are pursuing both policies simultaneously in the hope that the effects of one will offset the negative effects of the other. Unfortunately, this often results in the worst of all worlds: ‘stagflation’ i.e. low growth plus inflation.

The only true solution to the capitalist impasse will emerge from the more and more numerous, massive and conscious struggles of the working class against the economic attacks of the bourgeoisie. It will lead naturally to the overthrow of this system whose principle contradiction is that of the production for profit and accumulation and not the satisfaction of human needs.  

Vitaz 2/1/11

Youth unemployment has risen to 18.1% for those aged 18-24. This is worse than the official rate for the general population which is 7.9%. This only begins to tell the story: unemployment is 27% for 18-20 and 44.3% for 16-17 year-olds not in education, and for new graduates 20% (up from 10.6% at the start of the recession). Overall graduates do a little better than non-graduates at age 21-24 with 13.4% rather than 16% unemployment. No wonder students had such militant protests last November and December demanding “we want a future”.

The state orchestrates attacks on living standards

The underlying cause of unemployment is the crisis, in this example the fact that capitalism can no longer make a profit from exploiting the available workforce, and so is ‘socially excluding’ large numbers, particularly the young, from jobs. Not just here, not just in North Africa, the Middle East, but around the world.

It’s not just the recession that started with the credit crunch. Even in the developed countries employment has never returned to the levels of the 1960s and early 1970s. Already over a million in 1979, unemployment trebled in the 1980s before statistics were massaged and millions of the jobless reassigned to incapacity benefit – the origin of the 269,000 households where no-one has ever worked.

In these circumstances the role of the state is to manage the economy in the interests of capital, and right now that means lowering the cost of labour power. So although the crisis is an international and historic phenomenon, the state plays an essential role in coordinating and directing the attacks on jobs, on health, on education. Redundancies at the end of last year may have eased off a little since 2008-9, but we are now seeing another spate of announcements particularly in local government – 1200 in Liverpool, 800 in Oldham, 500 on the Isle of Wight, 500 in Plymouth… and a few hundreds in many others. These job losses are all essentially due to the cut to local government funding or formula grant of 27% announced in the spending review last year, meaning cuts of up to 8.8% this year. And of course when funding and jobs go, so do services that workers rely on. For example, among the £15 million cuts made by Solihull is a cut of £4.1m in children’s services, and all over the country Sure Start and children’s centres are either being closed or cut down to a skeleton service, worsening the prospects for those starting families. Connexions services that were supposed to give young unemployed the skills and support they need to find work are closing.

NHS is not immune

The NHS is losing 53,000 jobs, for example: 1,115 at Devon and Exeter Trust, 1,755 in Belfast, including 120 doctors and 620 nurses, 1,013 in East Lancashire including 50 doctors and 270 nurses. It will be no comfort whatsoever to the unemployed of any age, and particularly the young, that most of these will be through ‘natural wastage’. Remember that health service spending was ‘protected’ last year, although required to make around 20% efficiency savings. Front line services will inevitably feel the effects – it is precisely the intention to move as many activities as possible out of hospital, to shorten stays, and has been over the lifetime of several governments. In fact many of the initiatives that have received government funding – from Tony Blair’s Community Matron project to prescribing advice for GPs have been designed with cost cutting in mind. And the new reorganisation of the NHS under way at the moment is no different.

In education, money has been withdrawn from school rebuilding and repair, the National Audit Office is warning that cuts in funding will put more universities at risk of bankruptcy – remember the London Metropolitan redundancies. 400,000 teenagers are doing ‘vocational courses’ that are of no value in the job market. Young people and their families must foot more and more of the bill for their deteriorating education, with the abolition of the EMA in September and a rise in tuition fees at the universities that survive. Together with cuts in pre-school services this can only worsen educational outcomes at all levels.

And ahead of us we have all the attacks announced last year by the current coalition and previous Labour governments: the two year public sector pay freeze, cuts in housing benefit, restriction of Sure Start grants to first child, increase in fuel duty and many others come in this April, with more rolling out over the next two years, along with the continuing rise in the pension age. Not forgetting that there will be another budget later this month, no doubt with new cuts announced.

It is easy to see the role of the state in making redundancies in nationalised industries and local government, but it also applies in the private sector. Last November the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development warned that public sector cuts would cause even more job losses in the private sector, around 1.6 million. For example BT which gets 10% of its revenue from government contracts has had to cut costs with 35,000 job losses.

What is noticeable about these redundancies and cuts is that while they result from policies managed by central government, they are administered by innumerable employers – this or that NHS Trust, or Local Authority, or school or college. Legal resistance is now limited to actions divided up along the same lines.

We are all under attack, we need to fight back together

The attacks we face are class-wide, across the board, attacks on the young, but also on pensions, job losses in the public and private sector, attacks on benefits for the unemployed and the sick, but also benefits needed by families in work (child benefit, Sure Start grants, housing benefit). They are attacks orchestrated by the state on behalf of the entire capitalist class. And they aren’t going to stop – capitalism is in an impasse and can only come back for more attacks again and again.

There is obviously a lot of anger – shown, most recently, for example, by protesters storming Lambeth Town Hall. The attacks are coordinated, and so must are struggles be.  

Alex 5/3/11

It seems that everyone is talking about revolution. The recent social upheavals in North Africa have been described as ‘revolutions’. In Ireland, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has proclaimed a “democratic revolution” because now it’s his turn to impose the austerity measures previously administered by his Fianna Fail and Green Party predecessors. In the US celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is fighting a “Food Revolution” against obesity.

In the mass media we don’t expect to see any serious attempt at examining the idea of revolution as understood by marxists in the workers’ movement. It would be like expecting fashion magazines to be referring to ‘images created as a focus for religious veneration’ or ‘small pictures on a computer screen’ when they write of ‘icons’.

The commune is a publication that makes claims to a marxist heritage. On its website in mid-February there appeared an article “on Egypt, and revolution”. It starts:

“Revolutions are actually quite common. It’s only February and there have been two already this year in Tunisia and Egypt. Other recent revolutions include Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Kyrgyzstan (2005) and Ukraine (2005). Recent failed endeavours include Thailand (2009), Burma (2007), and Iran (2009).

All of these revolutions were, to use the Marxist term, political rather than social revolutions. That is, they overthrew the faction which ruled the state and replaced it with another one”. The distinction made by the author between political and social revolutions is that “a social revolution is one which transforms not just the ruling clique, but the way in which all society is organised”.

Trotsky’s view, in a period of defeat

This is not a unique approach to the question by someone claiming to be a marxist. In Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed, written in 1936, he looks at the Russian state and indicates a perspective for the working class. Because he saw nationalised property as a gain the changes he thought necessary specifically precluded any action against the state. Anticipating a more democratic regime he wrote “...so far as concerns property relations, the new power would not have to resort to revolutionary measures. It would retain and further develop the experiment of planned economy. After the political revolution - that is, the deposing of the bureaucracy - the proletariat would have to introduce in the economy a series of very important reforms, but not another social revolution.” In this passage the “political revolution” means not having “to resort to revolutionary measures” - it is not a “social revolution.”

Elsewhere in the same work Trotsky says “The overthrow of the Bonapartist caste will, of course have deep social consequences, but in itself it will be confined within the limits of political revolution.”

This concept of the ‘limits of political revolution’ is also found in Trotsky’s In Defence of Marxism, a work collecting material written in 1939 and 1940. Here he sees the Russian state “as a complex of social institutions which continues to persist in spite of the fact that the ideas of the bureaucracy are now almost the opposite of the ideas of the October Revolution. That is why we did not renounce the possibility of regenerating the Soviet state by political revolution”.Despite the fact that the state in Russia had become the overwhelmingly dominant means for the exploitation and suppression of the working class Trotsky thought that it could be regenerated by the process of ‘political revolution’.

The history of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution is, within certain parameters, open for discussion. Trotsky’s distinction between ‘political’ and ‘social’ revolution is unambiguous.

Marx, the founder of marxism

To find the basis for the marxist understanding of what a revolution is, it is necessary to start with Marx.

In his 1844 article “Critical Notes on the Article ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian’” Marx examines the phrase “A social revolution without a political soul” and concludes that “every revolution dissolves the old order of society; to that extent it is social. Every revolution brings down the old ruling power; to that extent it is political”.

He goes on: “But whether the idea of a social revolution with a political soul is paraphrase or nonsense there is no doubt about the rationality of a political revolution with a social soul. All revolution - the overthrow of the existing ruling power and the dissolution of the old order - is a political act. But without revolution, socialism cannot be made possible. It stands in need of this political act just as it stands in need of destruction and dissolution. But as soon as its organising functions begin and its goal, its soul emerges, socialism throws its political mask aside”.

It is clear that, while still continuing to base himself in the same framework, Marx was alive to historical developments throughout his life. The preface to the 1872 German edition of the Communist Manifesto says that events have made some details of the its political programme “antiquated”. In particular one thing proved by the Paris Commune (quoting The Civil War in France) was that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes”. The state has to be destroyed for the working class to take its transformation of society onto a higher level. The Paris Commune “was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour. ... The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule” (The Civil War in France).

There have been further subsequent developments in the marxist view of the process of revolution, most notably Lenin’s State and Revolution. What the clearest have in common is an understanding that a working class revolution is ‘political’ in that it has to destroy the state of its exploiters, and ‘social’ in that its goal is the transformation of society. The ‘political’ and the ‘social’ are not two separate phenomena but two aspects of one struggle.

When one capitalist faction replaces another in government following parliamentary elections, when a capitalist faction seizes power in a military coup, or when material reality forces the bourgeoisie to re-organise the way it functions as a ruling class, none of these are ‘revolutions’ as the capitalist state remains intact.

The ‘revolutions’ on the commune’s list are not social revolutions, but neither are they political revolutions. The replacement of one faction by another is not, from the point of view of the working class, a revolution of any sort. For the working class the destruction of the capitalist state is an essential political moment in a social revolution, part of the process that can lead to the liberation of all humanity.  

Barrow 4/3/11

What’s been happening in Libya has been rapidly changing and marked by many uncertainties, but many on the Left are quite clear on what they want their demagogues to do.

In a Guardian (28/2/11) article headlined “How can Latin America’s ‘revolutionary’ leaders support Gaddafi?” Mike Gonzalez criticises Presidents Ortega of Nicaragua and Chavez of Venezuela, along with Fidel Castro, for expressing their sympathy for Gaddafi and the Libyan government. He says they “cannot support an oppressive regime that now faces a mass democratic movement from below” when, apparently, they do.

The exact nature of the movement is open for discussion, but there can be no quibbling with the fact that the Libyan capitalist state is repressive.

In contrast to the Gaddafi regime Gonzalez says that Ortega and Chavez came “to power as a result of a mass insurrection” and that when Castro overthrew Batista it “was hugely popular”. Regardless of their route to power Ortega, Chavez and Castro are integral parts of the capitalist ruling class in their countries. As it happens Ortega and Chavez are presidents following elections, but, whether in power through the ballot box, or through a military coup like Gaddafi, they have done their best to serve their national capitals.

What Gonzalez wants to hear is a passionate denunciation of Libyan repression and expressions of solidarity with the people. His explanation for the failure of his fallen heroes is that “Libya has invested in all three countries and presented itself as an anti-imperialist power.” This is a rather crude, partly materialist explanation. In reality all these left-wing leaders proclaim their anti-imperialist credentials, and recognise Gaddafi as one of their own, one of the bosses that can talk ‘radical’. Meanwhile the exploited working class and other oppressed strata endure the capitalist reality which they preside over.

There is an exception to this pattern. Iranian President Ahmadinejad has criticised the “bad behaviour of the Libyan government towards the people” and said that the state should listen to the people’s desires. This is what ‘radical’ leaders are supposed to do, and, if they criticise other governments their message will be transmitted by their leftist admirers.

Leftist hypocrisy over WRP’s Libyan connections

Gaddafi’s 1969 coup looks a little different through the eyes of the Workers Revolutionary Party that publishes Newsline. They refer (28/2/11) to “the Libyan revolution, through which the Libyan people took control over their country from UK and US imperialism in 1969.”

Other leftists scoff at the WRP because of the agreements and communiqués it signed with the Libyan government, its slavish loyalty to the Libyan ‘socialist’ state and Iraq of Saddam Hussein both of which gave money to the WRP, its defence of the execution of Stalinists in Iraq, and a whole range of sordid activities in collaboration with regimes in the Middle East during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Even now, after any Libyan contributions have possibly long dried up, they “urge the Libyan masses and youth to take their stand alongside Colonel Gaddafi to defend the gains of the Libyan revolution, and to develop it. This can only be done by the defeat of the current rebellion” (Newsline 23/2/11), and publish one of the longest available extracts from Gaddafi’s speech “to the Libyan people made ... to rally them against the internal counter-revolutionary forces and their UK and US backers” (ibid 24/2/11).

But the leftists who have pointed a finger at the WRP for accepting money from the blood-stained regime of Gaddafi don’t have a leg to stand on. What the WRP was paid for most leftist groups do for free.

Take the example of the Vietnam War. In the 1960s and 70s the International Socialists (who went on to become the SWP) described North Vietnam as ‘state capitalist’, while more orthodox Trotskyists called it a ‘deformed workers state’, and Stalinists called it ‘socialist.’ These differences amounted to little in the unity of the Left in insisting on the necessity for workers and peasants in Vietnam to lay down their lives for the capitalist North against the capitalist South.

In the eight year war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, during which maybe a million people died, the Left put all the emphasis in their propaganda on the support by the US and others for the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. There might have been reservations over the Iranian regime and its archaic religious ideology, but the consensus on the Left was that it was better to die for Iran then Iraq. Of course, when Iraq was under attack from the US and its ‘coalitions’ the leftists found Saddam defensible, even though the position of the working class had not altered in any way.

During the conflicts in disintegrating Yugoslavia in the early 1990s the leftists chose their camps once more. The logic of defence of Bosnia or Kosovo led to support for the bombing of Belgrade. Support for Serbia and a united Yugoslavia meant support for the massacres undertaken by both ‘official’ and paramilitary forces

The brutalism of the WRP is easy to see, but the ‘critical support’ offered by other leftists for various factions of the bourgeoisie is just as poisonous. With calls for military intervention in Libya growing louder it will be interesting to see who the leftists rally to. Past experience shows that it won’t be for the working class in defence of its class interests  

Car 4/3/11

Revolt is contagious, above all when more and more of the world’s population are facing a future of misery thanks to the deepening of capitalism’s economic crisis. The ruling class has no real control over the crisis and is becoming increasingly concerned about the growth of resistance to its austerity plans. This concern is manifested in two ways: the attempt to make concessions and ‘democratise’ its rule, coupled with the strengthening of its whole apparatus of repression.

Egypt: the ‘People’s Army’ against the people

The centre of the epidemic is obviously in the Middle East. Mubarak is so far the most significant of the scalps claimed by the movement sweeping the Middle East. This is because Egypt is an important regional power and also has a relatively well-developed working class with a history of struggle behind it. It is important to note, however, that meeting this demand has not meant the dispersal of the movement. On 25 February mass protests once again took place in Tahrir Square demanding that the rest of Mubarak’s government (largely still in place) also depart. After several hundred of the more determined protesters tried to camp out in the square overnight, they were met with the full force of the ‘democratic’ army. The Occupied London website (which seems to have direct links with the movement in Egypt) drew the appropriate conclusions:

“The sad events of tonight will hopefully bury that relatively misguided phrase ‘the people and the army are one hand’ and reveal that the true nature of the situation in Egypt is better described as ‘the army and the police are one hand.’ A group of several hundred peaceful protestors, attempting to stay the night in Tahrir square and in front of the People’s Assembly to protest continued military rule and the persistence of the old regime’s illegitimate presence in government, were violently attacked and driven away by Military Police, Army officers and commandos wearing balaclavas and wielding sub-machine guns. One protestor, taken inside of the People’s Assembly building by army officers and beaten, was told bluntly ‘don’t fuck with the army…..the army is no friend of the people.’ This institution is as much a part of the regime as any other, representing not just the same entrenched military-political elite that have ruled Egypt for 60 years, but also enormous and substantial business interests that benefit from preferential treatment and systemic corruption. There has been little doubt in anyone’s mind that the army’s preference would be to maintain most of the country’s infrastructure (police and political) just as it was before, while placating the people telling them that it was their ally and guardian” www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=355 [235]

Iraq, Iran, Algeria...

If the ‘struggle for democracy’ is how the capitalist media present the situation in North Africa, the situation in Iraq is rather embarrassing for them. After a brutal war campaign and occupation that left thousands dead, Iraq is now supposedly a democracy and yet Iraq, too, has seen its own wave of mass protests. The appalling ‘security situation’ (i.e. the threat to daily life from both rival militias and the state security forces themselves) has been a focus for the initial demonstrations, as has the issue of state corruption. However, many of the demonstrations have been demanding the provision of basic utilities: electricity, water, etc. The government has already been forced to subsidise electricity costs in an effort to deflect the anger, but this hasn’t stopped the protests. In the latest protests on 4 March, thousands gathered in central Baghdad to protest against corruption and unemployment.

While the bourgeoisie has been happy to show pictures of the brutal repression in Egypt and especially Libya, it seems to have little stomach for dealing with the 29 deaths of protesters in Iraq at the hands of the security forces on the “Day of Rage” on 25 February. Nor does it seem to recognise the attempt to disperse the March 4th protest with mass beatings and water cannon. At the time of writing, we have little information on whether there is an attempt by the working class to develop an autonomous struggle in Iraq - although Kirkuk oil-workers were threatening strikes in mid-February - as seemed to be the case in Egypt; but it is certain that the response to dissent from ‘Iraqi democracy’ is much the same as ‘Egyptian dictatorship’.

Iran, possibly the most significant power in the region, has also been affected by the wave of protests. The so-called ‘Green Movement’ has been at the head of discontent with Ahmadinejad government since 2009 and seems to be trying to use the protests to push forward its own agenda. Protests have been met with typical brutality by the regime with mass arrests. But the working-class has also been raising its own voice in Iran. In the words of Time (22/2/11): “Over the past year, strikes and walkouts have broken out in the automobile, tire, sugar, textile, metals and transportation industries. Many of these protests were concerned with bread-and-butter issues: wages not paid, unexpected layoffs, deteriorating benefits and rising unemployment”. Most recently, strikes in the refineries at Abadan, where workers haven’t been paid for 6 months, were timed to coincide with the protests on the streets. The Iranian regime cannot help but be nervous about the developing situation in Abadan - one of the largest refineries in the world, it was also one of the epicentres in the revolt against the Shah in 1979.

In Algeria, following demonstrations in January and February, the regime has announced the suspension of the ‘state of emergency’ in place since 1992. Under the banner of fighting terrorism, this decree made any public meeting or demonstration illegal. The government has also announced steps to combat unemployment and homelessness, two major themes of the recent demonstrations. There is no substance to these concessions. Demonstrations of 2-3000 in mid-February were contained by 30-40,000 police, and a demonstration planned for 26 February was preceded by a flood of arrests. Despite the continuing atmosphere of state repression, however, there was an energetic demonstration by students in Tizi Ouzou. There are also signs of resistance coming from the workplaces: 300 employees of a phosphate enterprise in Annaba demonstrated outside the company HQ demanding wage rises and social benefits; paramedics came out on strike nationally in early February and education workers struck for two days in Bejaïa.

Protests continue in Tunisia despite the departure of Ben Ali: on 25 February 100,000 people demonstrated against the ‘transition government’ which is seen by many as the old regime in make-up. More street protests in Morocco, Jordan, Yemen, and Bahrain, where the social situation remains tense. Again, the bourgeoisie responds with the same mixture. Police killed six demonstrators in Morocco. In Bahrain the government initially used strong arm tactics to break up the occupation of the Pearl Roundabout, and then backed off on the advice of the American bourgeoisie. In Syria, where the secret police are everywhere, demonstrations have been minuscule and the clamp down immediate: 200 people trying to express solidarity with the revolt in Libya were violently dispersed. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, the king initially tried to buy off discontent by announcing a series of wage increases and social measures. However, in anticipation of future demonstrations, all protests and marches are to be banned. An official announcement stated “Regulations in the kingdom forbid categorically all sorts of demonstrations, marches and sit-ins, as they contradict Islamic Sharia law and the values and traditions of Saudi society.” It added that police were “authorised by law to take all measures needed against those who try to break the law.”

Asia, Europe, America….

Despite the pseudo-explanations of the press, this mood of rebellion is not an ‘Arab’ phenomenon. 100,000 people demonstrated in New Delhi on 23 February to voice their growing disquiet over unemployment and rising prices. One demonstrator said in an interview: “I earn 100-125 rupees a day [2 or 3 dollars]. How can we survive on that if prices are going up so much?” December figures put inflation at 18%. One banner read “prices will end up killing people on the street”.

In China there was a major wave of strikes last year and the government is extremely sensitive to any form of dissent. It responded to Internet appeals for a ‘Jasmine revolution’ in China with further restrictions on access to the web and by a heavy police presence on the streets, with the use of barriers to prevent free movement on the day designated for the protests.

Conditions facing the population in south east Europe have deteriorated rapidly and there is a groundswell of discontent. In Albania on 25 February at least three people were shot dead during a protest in front of government buildings. In Croatia, there has been a series of demonstrations against the government and the rising cost of living. Some of the initial ones seem to have had a very nationalist flavour, but more recently they have had a more working/class student composition, with banners and slogans critical of capitalism gaining an echo. In Greece, on top of the youth revolt at the end of 2008, there has been a series of general strikes against the government’s well-publicised austerity packages. Tightly controlled by the unions, these one-day strikes were beginning to look like rituals, but the last one, on 23 February, seems to have had more life: more massive participation of public and private sector employees affecting banks, schools, hospitals, transport and other sectors, along with a series of strikes going on outside the ‘official’ days of action.

One of the most significant struggles in the recent period, however, has been the mobilisation of public sector workers in Wisconsin, USA, which has crystallised the mounting frustration of the American working class.

“Over 200,000 public sector workers and students have taken to the streets and have been occupying the state capitol in Wisconsin to protest proposed changes to collective bargaining agreements between the state government and its public employee unions. The state’s rookie governor, Tea Party backed Republican Scott Walker, has proposed a bill removing collective bargaining rights for the majority of the state’s 175,000 public employees, effectively prohibiting them from negotiating pension and health care contributions, leaving only the right to bargain over salaries. Moreover, according to the legislation, public employee unions would have to submit themselves to yearly certification votes in order to maintain the right to represent workers in future scaled down negotiations. Firefighters not affected by the proposed changes (because their union supported Walker in the November election) have shown their solidarity with those under attack by joining the protests, which many say have taken inspiration from the wave of unrest sweeping Egypt and the wider Middle East. Many Wisconsin protestors proudly display placards giving the Governor the ominous moniker Scott ‘Mubarak’ Walker, while others hold aloft signs asking ‘If Egypt Can Have Democracy, Why Can’t Wisconsin?’ Protesters in Egypt have even shown their solidarity with workers in Wisconsin!” (From the ICC online article ‘Wisconsin public employees, defence of the unions leads to defeat’).

The conflict in Wisconsin is presented as a fight to defend the trade unions, and the majority of workers do perceive it in these terms, just as hundreds of thousands in the Middle East see theirs as a struggle for democracy. The ruling class makes maximum use of these ideological weak points, but the underlying motive for all the current revolts is the necessary reaction to the economic degradation and political repression imposed by the world-wide crisis of this system. The germs of an international movement against the system itself can be glimpsed in the rapid spread of revolts across national boundaries and the raising of slogans which express real international class solidarity. When workers in Egypt and America consciously support each others’ struggles, the road to revolution becomes a little bit wider, and the ruling class has every reason to fear this. 

Amos 5/3/11

This article from the printed edition of World Revolution has already been published online under the title 

A penny off petrol duty, paid for by a windfall tax on North Sea oil companies. A rise in the basic rate income tax allowance (i.e. a tax cut). A freeze in council tax. And a new tax on private jets. Has George Osborne suddenly taken the advice of the leftists and begun to change the balance of the tax burden?

The populist moves in the budget are no doubt an attempt to soften the pain of the previous emergency budget last year which unveiled a historic restructuring of the ‘social state’. It goes without saying that even were we to take the measures at face value, they really go nowhere to ameliorating the most brutal assault on workers’ living conditions since the Great Depression.

It’s already clear that the cut in petrol duty has had little effect on actual prices, which were raised even before the measure was announced. And the increase in the tax allowance allowed the government to disguise another measure around taxation: the annual increase in personal allowances will now be calculated from the CPI as opposed to the RPI. In the long-term, the CPI generally runs at 1 percentage point below the RPI, meaning that tax allowances will rise much more slowly relative to the cost of living. Some analysts have suggested that the package of measures, supposedly designed to benefit low-paid workers, will ultimately hit them the hardest.

But does the ‘tax the rich’ mantra recited by the left actually offer a real alternative? Don’t the bankers earn billions in bonuses? The left call upon the state to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation but this hides the real nature of the state, which is not a neutral organ but the ‘executive committee’ of the very ruling class the left call upon the state to tax. Armies of accountants stand ready to find loopholes for capitalists in the rules they set themselves.

Nor does the ‘tax the rich’ slogan take into account the nature of capitalism. The central motor of capitalist society is the drive to growth (or accumulation). Recessions, crises, etc. are the breakdown of that accumulation process. Fundamentally, accumulation depends on the ability of capital to exploit labour to a sufficient degree to ensure this growth. The official explanation for the credit crunch (reckless lending by the banks) is thus only partially true. At root, it meant lending to capitalists who then failed to milk a suitable amount of profit from their workers. In essence, workers were paid too much relative to the exploitative needs of capital.

The only response to the crisis is to drastically reduce workers’ real wages (both directly and the portion derived the social services provided by the state). And this is what we have seen through a combination of cuts in wages, social services and stealth cuts through inflation. Unfortunately for capital, these measures result in further shocks to demand because workers have to reduce their consumption, exacerbating the overproduction that is the classical expression of the capitalist crisis. The ‘debate’ about economic policy between right and left is how to reduce wages while stimulating demand.

The promises from the left are as empty as Osborne’s populist gestures. Even were they actually carried out, they would only exacerbate the crisis. Rather than succumbing to utopian dreams of reforming a dying system, workers need to launch struggles in defence of their living conditions and work towards ending this social system once and for all.  

Ishamael 1/4/11

Since the 1980s, the ruling class in Britain has been discussing how the various pensions schemes aimed at the working class have been too generous and unaffordable. Even at their peak, final salary schemes were generally only available to workers at the largest companies, leaving millions of workers dependent on the state pension or to be ‘mis-sold’ dodgy private pensions. In the years since, under governments of right and left, the state pension has been steadily eroded while ‘final salary’ schemes have been replaced with far less generous ‘defined contribution’ arrangements that reduced benefits to workers.

The efforts of the LibCon Coalition to tackle public sector pensions are thus in complete continuity with the previous Labour administration, which had presided over the more or less complete abolition of final salary pensions in the private sector. In the spirit of tying up loose ends, the Coalition are proposing to end National Insurance rebates that currently support final salary pensions schemes. This “will almost certainly see the end of final salary pensions” (Financial Times 24/3/11).

In this context, it must seem strange that the coalition is actually considering putting up the state pension, even if it is only to £155 per week. In practice, it means little more than abolishing the hated means-testing (which was so onerous many pensioners simply didn’t bother) which largely pays for itself by cutting the state’s administration costs. But what capitalism gives with one hand, it takes with the other. For those pushed over income tax allowance thresholds by the change, taxation will eat up the gains. Also to be taken into account is the acceleration of raising the pension age to 66. Previously planned for 2026 this is now happening in 2020.

The ruling class have been trying to promote the idea of working longer as a positive for some time. For example, the ending of mandatory retirement ages has been presented as an attack on age ‘discrimination’. Whatever the ruling class may plan for the future, the ‘working pensioner’ has already been a reality for some time. In 2006 more than half the jobs created were filled by people above the state pension age.

But while certain supermarket chains present us with the image of the plucky oldster happily continuing with his exploitation, the reality for many is that ill-health will eventually spoil this pretty picture. Another inconvenience is that while poverty may force pensioners to continue selling their labour, they face the same prospect as everyone else – the likelihood of unemployment - although the bourgeoisie will not count them as unemployed, of course.

The bourgeoisie talk as though employment is more than an aspiration – as though people only have to decide to work and they are home and dry. ‘Working until we drop’ is going to be the least of our worries because the same economic crisis which has created the pension problem also creates mass unemployment. Furthermore, admirable as it is that some older people can show that they are still capable of looking out for themselves in the labour market, if the elderly continue to take up jobs at the same kind of rate as they did in 2006, that actually makes it even more difficult for the young to get jobs. For about a million young workers there is not much chance of getting into the labour market at all – much less of getting paid a rate that would allow them to contribute to a ‘defined contribution’ scheme or any other type of savings scheme. To ‘work until they drop’ would actually be a step up for those in the front line of crisis-ridden capitalism’s brutal assault on the working class.  

Hardin 1/4/11

Maybe half a million people were on the TUC’s March for the Alternative on 26 March. From demo veterans to those on their first ever protest, all were shepherded from the Embankment to Hyde Park by a combination of police and union stewards.

In The Socialist (30/3/11) you could readthat “All of those capitalist commentators that have written off the trade union movement today as a spent force were decisively answered by this demonstration. The power of the trade unions was undisputedly established.” The ability of the unions to book special trains and charter coaches to get hundreds of thousands of people to walk a couple of miles across London is undeniable. Indeed, the numbers the unions were able to mobilise confirmed that they are still a significant social actor,

Robert Shrimsley, a cynical columnist writing in the Financial Times (1/4/11), observed that
“this kind of peaceful protest is pointless. The system has all the shock absorbers necessary to handle a law-abiding demonstration. The next day ministers were already clear they would ignore the entire event”. His analysis of the “political passivism” was that “Marching is as much about the marchers as it is about the cause. It’s about their need to feel they are doing something; something responsible; something lawful – something futile that makes them all feel better”. And if you add in the subsequent spectacle of a few small fires and graffiti in the West End, and the Fortnums occupations, then you have a neat contrast between the spectacle of a lively minority and the spectacle of enormous numbers marching. And both functioned as outlets for anger at cuts past and future.

Although the TUC had only organised the passive parade to boost their credibility and give a focus for people’s anxiety about their future, the marchers still had to turn up. Coaches and trains might have been free, but you still had to get up on a Saturday, for a stay of some hours in London, including waiting up to 2½ hours for the march to just get off, and listen to an excess of whistles and samba bands. As a protest it was impotent, but it did show how widespread is unease about jobs and declining living conditions.

Capitalism doesn’t work

There were two stated aims to the TUC demonstration: “to give a national voice to all those affected by the cuts” and “to show that people reject the argument that there is no alternative.” The ‘alternative’ offered is one “in which rich individuals and big companies have to pay all their tax, that the banks pay a Robin Hood tax and ... in which we strain every sinew to create jobs and boost ... sustainable economic growth.”

The idea that changes in the taxation system (plus the straining of every sinew) can create jobs and economic growth denies the reality and the depth of the capitalist crisis. There is no way of organising capitalism that will make its deepening crisis stabilise, let alone vanish, and there is no way that capitalism can be made to benefit the exploited rather than the exploiters.

Capitalism means the domination of the bourgeoisie, not only with the richest individuals and businesses having their interests protected, but as a society in which the accumulation of capital is the driving force for the ruling class. Capitalism means workers working for wages, as much as feudalism meant working for a feudal lord and slavery meant working for your owner. They are all forms of exploitation, not means for satisfying human needs (except those of the ruling class).

And, speaking of defenders of exploitation, it came as no surprise to hear Ed Miliband in Hyde Park saying that some cuts were actually needed and not to be opposed. After all, the last Labour government set in motion the cuts that the LibCon coalition is continuing with, and its thirteen years in power left the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Against Miliband’s claims to speak for a “mainstream majority” there were union activists saying it was necessary to go from marches to “a plan of resistance including coordinated strike action”,as Unite union leader Len McCluskey put it. Of course, any ‘plan’ and any ‘coordination’ would, in their vision, be in the hands of the unions. The experience of the working class is that such union actions undermine and ultimately sabotage the effectiveness of workers’ struggles. Unions are still significant social actors, but they serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, not the working class.  

Car 2/4/11

In the wake of the militant student struggles in the autumn, and before and after the massive TUC demo of 26 March, there are growing signs of an effort by radical minorities to get together and discuss the lessons of the struggle and how to take it forward. Two recent examples: a discussion group in London which came together following the perceived failure of the ‘Network X’ initiative in Manchester, and a recent meeting on fighting the cuts organised by the Anarchist Federation in Whitechapel and attended by comrades from different political tendencies: both raise the possibility of more regular ‘physical’ forums for discussion in London. The article that follows is an account of a further expression of this phenomenon: the general discussion meetings that took place in a weekend of activities aimed at preparing for the TUC’s 26 March demo and held at the University of London Union.     

“From capitalist crisis to cuts…to revolution? … could the fight against the cuts be the start of a new movement that goes beyond both the capitalist economy and the state?” The first presentation at this meeting at the ‘Arts Against the Cuts March Weekend’ from Endnotes certainly posed the essential questions. First of all the nature of the crisis, the role of bail outs and sovereign debt – which can only be paid back by the state squeezing us dry, whoever is in government, since the Labour Party also favours cuts. It is not easy to defeat the state, and the TUC slogan “Jobs, Growth, Justice” is posed entirely within the system. The revolutionary alternative is not easy, and the presentation went on to put the speaker’s view that this requires going beyond 19th Century ideologies and in particular the notion of the working class as one pole of society leading a form of transition to communism, because that carries within itself the seeds of betrayal and counter-revolution. In his view what is needed is the immediate abolition of all capitalist categories[1]. Posing the nature of the capitalist crisis we face today and the nature of revolution, the key questions at stake today, was certainly very ambitious for a 90 minute meeting.

Two more presentations followed. David Broder of The Commune did not want to start with the crisis but with the lack of working class reaction and the TUC inaction. He wanted to see the struggle against the cuts say what we want, such as how we want public services run. David Graeber introduced more points, such as the way our day to day interactions often follow principles of solidarity rather than capitalist exchange, that capitalism is not a creative force. Discussion from the floor raised many more points such as the contribution of anthropology and understanding of hunter-gatherer societies; the need for an international revolution; the importance of strikes going on in Egypt… the importance of struggles for jobs… And one speaker rejected the whole framework of trying to understand the crisis and revolution, which he characterised as being soft on the bourgeoisie, in favour of simply condemning the cuts proposed by the current government. Overall the lack of time and lack of focus provided by the different emphases in the three presentations inhibited the development of a real discussion.

Beginning to discuss the issues

Later on a second meeting, “Challenging the anti-cuts discourse” introduced by Mute, took up the key questions. A very brief presentation pointed out that the dominant perception on the left is the idea that there is no crisis, that it is simply a pretext for austerity. This misconception of the crisis and of what the struggle involves leads to the idea that it is our job to propose an alternative for capitalism.

G, from the Hackney Alliance to Defend Public Services, disagreed with this. Capitalism is always in crisis, this is how it develops as shown by looking at any decade in the last 150 years. He disagreed with the notion of a terminal crisis of capitalism necessary for communism. Besides European companies hold lot of cash, and capitalism is growing in India and China – and could here if the working class could be forced to accept the same low level of wages.

Several contributions recognised the importance of the crisis: this is the biggest crisis since 1929, it is secular, not cyclical, and 2-3 years into the crisis we are still seeing fallout from it. Capitalism cannot find productive investment opportunities as greater productivity displaces labour. In the 19th Century crises came every 10 years or so, but since 1914 the problem has been on a different level. Keynesianism would make no sense without the Second World War.

What is the implication of this for struggling against the cuts? For G it is simply important to say ‘no’ to the cuts. David Graeber, who is also sceptical about the crisis which he described as artificial, thought we should use it to put forward radical positions.

But there is a crisis, which is causing the imposition of austerity all over the world. We can be honest about this and still demand no cuts. One contribution called the idea that cuts are unnecessary, as put forward by UKuncut, a social democratic analysis, and their idea of ‘tax the bosses’ a dead end, while the fight to keep services has the potential to go beyond that. For another, the TUC cannot admit the crisis because if there is no answer within capitalism they are redundant. Others pointed to the nationalism of the left with its British solutions for British problems, despite the international nature of the crisis, and to the importance of the international struggle of the working class.

This effort at discussing and understanding the situation faced by the working class today, one which we have seen from Exeter to Edinburgh, is an essential contribution to the development of the class consciousness we need.  

May 28/3/11

We are publishing here an article written by our French section in Revolution Internationale 420 in response to the very widespread debate about the tactic of the oil refinery blockades during last autumn’s struggles against pension ‘reforms’. The blockades have certainly impressed some revolutionaries outside France. Brighton Solidarity Federation, for example, recently published a text ‘The paradox of reformism: a call for economic blockades’[1] which contains the following argument:

“It’s all about the balance of class forces. It’s primarily a power struggle, not a moral argument. We might have right on our side, but might will determine the outcome. For the fight against the cuts, there are several implications. Symbolic protest won’t cut it. If actions like UK Uncut move from largely awareness-raising into the realms of economic blockades, then we’ll be getting somewhere. And the state will react accordingly, we must be prepared for more police violence if we’re serious about winning. No doubt such tactics will also be condemned by those notionally on ‘our side’ just like Aaron Porter condemned the Millbank Riot which kick-started this movement. The irony is without such a movement, they’re powerless too. But given the TUC is in thrall to the Labour Party, and the lack of independent workers’ organisation, sustained, co-ordinated strike action against austerity looks unlikely. On the other hand economic blockades have been used to great effect in France both as a standalone tactic and in support of strike action”.

There’s no doubt that the working class can’t push back capital’s attacks by complaining that they are unfair: it is indeed all about the balance of class forces. But the question is whether the tactic of the economic blockade really does create a balance of forces in favour of the working class. The Solfed article seems to offer a very misleading answer, since it seems to think that blockades could work as a ‘standalone’ tactic as well as part of a wider strike movement, and even seem to imply that it would be good to use such tactics in the UK because “sustained-co-ordinated action against austerity looks unlikely” here. In sum, blockades can work when more massive movements are not on the cards. This line of reasoning confirms the criticism made in the article that follows: that as an ideology. ‘the blockade’ obeys the same logic as trade unionism: a specialised minority acts on behalf of the working class; and furthermore, that the unions in France put so much emphasis on the blockade tactic precisely because they could us it to block the real extension of the class struggle.

The blockade of petrol refineries and oil depots was a major element in the struggles against the retirement reform of 2010 in France. In the general assemblies and demonstrations it was a focus of many discussions and debates. For many, blocking the refineries appeared as a means of concretely bringing pressure to bear on the bourgeoisie by paralysing transport and the whole of the economy through this “strategic sector”.

“Despite eight days of particularly well-followed action, it seemed that even with three-and-a-half million of people on the streets, the processions weren’t enough to spread the struggle (...) Throughout France blockages of refineries, of refuse and waste treatment plants and in many other sites, were on the increase. Undoubtedly, the obstinacy of the state and the bosses in imposing their retirement reforms pushed the struggle to rediscover union practices which had disappeared a long time ago (...) How could it be seriously thought that strikes could boil down to processions in the street, hemmed in by the forces of order? History (...) often shows us that our rights, our social acquisitions have been drawn like teeth (and not through polite requests) coming out of very hard struggles and generally by using the only means available to workers: the strike and the blockade of production at the place of work”[2]. These few lines from the CNT-Vignoles sum up what the “blockers” of autumn 2010 were effectively thinking. From February to November, demonstration followed demonstration, each time bringing together millions of people. Within the marches there was an immense anger faced with the degradation of living conditions . However, the French bourgeoisie did not cede ground and even stepped up its attacks on social security, access to health care and on the numbers of workers directly employed by the state. While the “processions in the street” seemed to everyone impotent and sterile, some minorities looked for more radical and effective methods of struggle. The blockade of the economy thus appeared as “obvious”[3].

The refinery blockade: a Pyrrhic victory

A few days of occupation of the refineries was sufficient to create a fuel and petrol shortage and problems in transport generally.

At the end of September, strikes broke out in some refineries. The movement spread quite naturally and factories closed one after the other. In mid-October, 12 French refineries were all blocked. Faced with the provocations of the CRS police, some pickets composed of oil workers, workers of other sectors, unemployed, students, retired, etc., manned the gates day and night.

Rapidly petrol and diesel were drying up at the pumps and the shortage was the number one story in the media. The declarations of the political authorities affirmed that there was no problem of supply to the pumps came across as absurd. Finally, according to INSEE, petrol production was reduced by 56.5% during October.

Apparently the blockaders seemed to have succeeded in their aim. But clearly, in reality, they didn’t. This so-called “victory” is nothing but an illusion created by the propaganda of the bourgeoisie. Letting us think that it is possible to block the production of one sector, whatever it is, is a big lie. And in the precise case of petrol, the bourgeoisie had the full capacity to face up to the blockades. France, as many other countries, in fact holds several million tonnes of petrol in reserve assuring itself of a number of months provisions (17 million tonnes of strategic stocks, or more than three months of normal consumption, reserve stocks of the petrol companies, reserves of oil managed by the army...). Further, with the internationalisation of pipeline networks and, quite simply, importing from abroad by road tankers, states do not solely rely on their own reserves in order to assure the distribution of fuel. As Peter Vener writes, “It is characteristic that even the most insurrectionist of the tiqquniens[4] talk of blocking the ‘economy of the country’, from the simple generalisation of blockades made more or less sporadic or widespread, more or less spontaneous or controlled from above, etc., as if that made the least sense in this time of ‘globalisation’ and the organisation of modern capitalist ‘network’”, particularly in the key sector of the production and distribution of fuel”[5].

The risk of a shortage of fuel in October 2010, and the paralysis of the national economy was thus only a fairy tale to send the workers to sleep. The difficulties in filling up their tanks only affected some drivers, above all because of a panic. The petrol companies even profited from the occasion by putting up their prices. The blockade of the refineries was only a gnat’s bite on the back of an elephant. And capitalism has a thick skin!

In fact, behind this pretend victory of the blockade is hidden the contrary: a real defeat for the working class. The bourgeoisie used the refinery blockade to isolate the most combative workers and divide the proletariat.

* On the one hand, the unions, notably the CGT, resting on the absolute control that it exercised over operations, used it to isolate the refinery workers who were being threatened with restructuring and are thus particularly militant, from the rest of their class. Their justified anger was not the point of departure for an extension of the struggle: rather than organise flying pickets to enterprises of other sectors for them to join the movement, the CGT clearly locked the blockaders into their place of work. Everything revolved around the blockade of the refineries whatever the cost, creating the atmosphere of a besieged citadel where only the “fuel shortages” mattered.

* On the other hand, through an intense campaign on the risks of a fuel shortage, the government and its media readily created a climate of panic among the population. Squeezed between costly days of massively supported strikes and daily harassment from the bosses, many workers were afraid of not being able to get to work. This concern was expressed elsewhere in long queues at the petrol stations that journalists covered up to the point of nausea. If, in general, proletarians did not blame refinery workers and even expressed their solidarity, the hysterical propaganda from the media undeniably contributed to breaking the dynamic of extension in which the struggle was engaged.

Thus, it’s not by chance if, after months of the movement growing in power, the decline started at the very moment when the blockade of the refineries was fully implemented.

But given a mass movement always starts off somewhere, couldn’t the blockade of the refineries have been the point of departure of a much wider struggle? Why did the ICC, from the first blockades, warn of the risk of the confinement, isolation and division contained in this form of action?[6].

The cult of a blockade against the mass nature of the struggle

From its first manifestations, the theory of the economic blockade was built on weak foundations. The pro-blockers very quickly became aware of the ineffectiveness of endless demonstrations organised by the unions. However, they concluded from this that a handful of determined individuals preventing the running of strategic targets such as refineries was the best basis on which to create the conditions for a widespread and authentic solidarity. A group in Lyon called “Premier Round” thus wrote: “The present movement goes from here: ‘We must block the economy; how do we do it?’ The answer is posed around the question of petrol. Even if no-one knows if it will work, if it is the best way to attack the problem, it’s an attempt: organise a petrol shortage. And then see what happens. With the rolling strike voted on, it’s sufficient that some strikers adopt the blockade as a means of action so that others come to join them from elsewhere. Where the strike and sabotage isn’t enough, strikers should oppose transportation. In this way we’ll see train drivers, students, postal workers, nurses, teachers, dockers, unemployed, together blocking the oil depots – without waiting for the endless appeals of an abstract ‘convergence of struggles’. The same thing should happen at the railway stations, postal centres, transport depots, airports, and motorways: wherever it’s enough for a few dozen people to do the blocking (...) the sinews of the struggle unfolding are the blockades of oil refineries and petrol depots, a relat9ively small number of nerve centres. To block the production and distribution of petrol is to finish with symbolic demands and to attack where it does the most damage”[7]. This single phrase alone reveals the false route: “wherever it’s enough for a few dozen people to do the blocking”.

It is moreover very significant that the targets aimed at were refineries, stations, airports, motorways or public transport. The transport sector is effectively a strategic sector for the working class, but for exactly the opposite reasons than those raised by Premier Round: the blockage of trains, metros or buses is often an obstacle to extending the struggle and can facilitate the games of the bourgeoisie. It’s even one of their classic ploys: set workers against each other by unleashing campaigns around the theme of “taking passengers hostage”. Above all the blockage of transport prevents the mobility of the workers who can no longer give their solidarity to the strikers by attending their assemblies or participating in their demonstrations. The movement of delegations of strikers towards other firms is equally made more difficult. In fact the total blockage almost always favours the struggle being locked up into corporatism and isolation. That’s why the most advanced workers’ struggles have never led to a blockade of transport.

When the working class appropriates the means of production

The theory of the blockade of the economy is based on a profoundly correct idea: the working class draws its force from the central place that it occupies in production. The proletariat produces almost all of the riches that the bourgeoisie, in its own parasitic role, takes for itself. Thus, through the strike, the workers are potentially capable of blocking all production and paralysing the economy.

At the time of events around May 68 in France and those of August 1980 in Poland, gigantic strikes paralysed the economy leading even... to fuel shortages. But the blockade wasn’t in itself the objective of the workers, since the country was already paralysed. If these two struggles are historic and remain engraved in our memories, it is because the proletariat knew how to construct a rapport de force in its favour through self-organisation and the massive scale of its struggles. When the workers took over the struggle themselves, they spontaneously regrouped in general assemblies in order to debate and collectively decide which actions to undertake. They looked for the solidarity of their class brothers by going to meet them and draw them into the movement. To spread the struggle is a preoccupation and an instinctive practice of the exploited faced with capital.

At the times of these two great movements, the strikers looked to turn the economy around for themselves, in the service of the struggle and its needs. In 1968, for example, the railworkers ran their trains so that the population could travel to the demonstrations. In 1980, this grip on the means of production went much further still. The inter-enterprise strike committee (the MKS) had “all prerogatives to conduct the strike. It formed working commissions – maintenance, information, links with journalists, security – and decided if certain industries should continue working in order to assure the needs of the strikers. Thus refineries worked and produced, at a slower rate, the fuel necessary for transport, the buses and trains to run, the food industry went beyond the highest norms (previously fixed by the bureaucrats) in order to assure provisions for the population. The three towns (of the Baltic ports), Gdansk, Gdynia, Sopot, lived the rhythm of the strike, the rhythm that the strikers decided[8]. In the strongest moments of this movement, the strike committee organised supplies to the strikers and the whole population by controlling electricity and food production.

The blockade of the economy is a union manoeuvre

The pro-blockers close to the group Premier Round correctly and scathingly criticised the grip of the unions on the struggle. From this, they identified the blockade of the refineries as an action of radical struggle outflanking the iron grip of the unions: “New, informal solidarities are being put in place on the ground and outside of the control of the union leaderships. One feels that the latter have been overwhelmed by events and don’t quite know what to do with all this ‘support’. This solidarity has its own strength and can’t really be controlled and isolated”. But reality was exactly the opposite. It’s sufficient moreover to carry on reading the article for this illusion to jump out of the page:

“Where do you go to support the strikers? Where to send the cash?

* Grandpuits Refinery: donations in cash or cheques made payable to: CFDT-CGT at the following address: Intersyndicale CFDT-CGT, Raffinerie Total de Grandpuits, postal box 13, 77 720, MORMANT, or donate online through the internet site.

* Raffinerie Total de Flandres: address your donations to the strike fund managed by SUD-Chime: P.W. SUD-Chimie Raffinerie des Flandres 59140 DUNKERQUE. Cheques payable to: SUD-Chimie RF.”

The actions of blockading are unfolding “outside of the control of the union leaderships” because they “can’t really be controlled and isolated” so thinks Premier Round, which then informs us, without batting an eyelid, “Where to send donations” to support the strikers: to the CDFT, the CGT and the SUD! The truth is that the unions organised the paralysis of the fuel industry from top to bottom.

Again, Peter Vener provides a rare example of daring to look reality in the face: “Some people joined up with the strike pickets around the refineries in general response to the appeal launched by the local inter-union committees, now often re-named inter-professional assemblies because they were looking to enlarge their base. Certainly, such people didn’t have political designs but they simply had the impression of going beyond atomisation, separation and corporatism, in brief, participating in the ‘convergence of struggles’ and the ‘blockade of the economy’(...) The people who swelled the ranks of the pickets didn’t ask themselves why the trade unionists of the energy and chemical industries, so usually corporatist and closed in on themselves, felt the need to appeal to forces not belonging to their sector, even strangers to the ‘world of work’, sometimes even anarchists on whom they were still openly spitting the day before. Was it a question of new breaches through the walls of bastions so usually well protected and controlled by the trade unionists who, from their watchtowers, usually organise a cordon sanitaire around themselves? Do we see a real rupture by the workers of these sectors with their specific corporatism, based on the horrible neo-Stalinist tradition of ‘produce French and buy French’, etc? In reality, except perhaps for some amongst them, there’s nothing of the sort here. Hence the acceptance of these forces coming from elsewhere, who, for the most part, have to play the role of additional troops to the union apparatus of the CGT and also the SUD (...) Today, via the re-centring of the main union organisation towards fashionable forms of intervention, such as the programmed blockage of the axes of communication, sometimes announced in advance to the police by the union leaders, we go from the ‘strike by proxy’ of the 1980s and 90s, to the ‘blockade by proxy’. The ‘blockaders’ of the sites, have very often worked for the union head offices. Full stop.”

Thus, at the refinery of Grandpuits in the Paris region, numerous workers, unemployed, students, retired, etc., came every day to give their support to the strikers. Some even sometimes joined in with the General Assembly. But these rare “open” GA’s were just pathetic masquerades: speeches from the CFDT representative, then the CGT, then... vote. No discussion, no debate.

Why have these pro-blockaders, usually so critical of the union leaderships, put themselves forward as supporters of the actions typical of the strong-arm tactics of the CGT? For Peter Vener, “one shouldn’t confuse simple reactions of anger against union stewards with a profound criticism of trade unionism”. The experience of reality is moreover much more edifying. There is in fact a perfect concordance between the partisans of the economic blockade and those of the unions: a minority decides and acts instead of the majority of the exploited. The difference lies in what the pro-blockers think acts in the interests of the struggle, whereas the union apparatus are fully conscious of their work of sabotage.

No immediate recipe, no minority activist practice, can be a substitute for the extension and massive struggle of the proletariat. Concretely, the blockade of the economy can’t be a short-cut involving a victory falling from the sky by decree; it is the result of a process of generalisation of the self-organised struggle and solidarity of the workers. If it was obvious that the autumn demonstrations were ineffective, we must not deduce that it’s useless for millions to be on the streets - the real question is this: who leads the movement - the workers or the unions?

“The emancipation of the working class will be the work of the workers themselves” ... of all the workers. 

Pawel and V 21/2/11

“People were no longer prepared to beg for bread or tolerate being beaten in the streets by the police” - as an activist from Daraa in southwestern Syria near the border with Jordan explained to the Financial Times (1/4/11). These are the grievances that lie behind the revolts and protests across the Arab world this year, from Tunisia to Bahrain. In Syria there have been demands to know what became of the thousands who disappeared in the 1980s after the 1982 rebellion was drowned in the blood of tens of thousands, indignation at the arrest of schoolchildren for anti-government graffiti, and then at the murder of the mainly young men who protested against this.

The Syrian bourgeoisie have reacted just as murderously as Gaddafi – and Bahrain backed by Saudi Arabian troops – using teargas, live ammunition, baton charges, arrests and detention. In little over two weeks at least 60 people have been killed, including 55 in Daraa and another four after the demonstrations in Damascus. As Al Jazeera’s senior analyst points out “The complication of the situation in Libya, leading to internal violence and international intervention and great destruction, will clearly dissuade many Syrians and Arabs from attempting more of the same in Syria”. Despite this, unrest has now spread to the Kurdish northern cities. The sacking of the governor of Daraa, the sacking of the entire Syrian government, and Bashir al-Assad’s announcement of a panel to look at replacing (or renaming) the emergency powers instituted in 1963 with anti-terror legislation were never going to satisfy the protesters.

Inevitably after half a century of the brutal dictatorship of the al-Assad dynasty there are huge illusions in the prospects democracy, illusions which have not helped the movements in either Egypt, where the military continue to rule having pushed Mubarak aside, or in Libya where different factions of the ruling class are sacrificing the population in a civil war.

Nor can the population rely on the democratic credentials of the ‘international community’ – currently embroiled in Libya as well as Afghanistan and Iraq. Not that this ‘community’ of thieves will fail to take any advantage they can out of the current unrest in Syria. Despite all the evidence of state repression over more than a decade, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken of a potentially reforming Syrian presidency and Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney of “an important opportunity to be responsive to the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people” (FT). Not because they are “at best fooling themselves” as Democrat Congressman Gary Ackerman said, but because the US administration sees opportunities as well as risks in the situation and particularly wants to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran. As ever, the ‘humanitarian’ statements of the bourgeoisie only serve its imperialist interests.

Faced with poverty, murderous repression and the manoeuvring of great powers, the protesters in Syria, as elsewhere, have shown great courage. The best way to show our solidarity is to develop our own struggles, for it is only the international struggle of the working class that can put an end to the system responsible for their misery.  

Alex 2/4/11

In WR 341 [250] we described the wave of struggles popularly known as ‘The Great Labour Unrest’ that hit Britain and Ireland 100 years ago. We showed that these struggles – which at their high points reached near-insurrectionary levels – were in fact a spectacular expression of the mass strike analysed so clearly by Rosa Luxemburg, and formed an integral part of an international wave of class struggle that culminated in the 1917 Russian revolution.

In this article we look at the impact of the mass strikes on the British and Irish working class, and the attempts of militant workers and revolutionaries to draw the lessons of these historic struggles.

The mass strikes were a product of the growing class consciousness of the British and Irish workers, and gave an enormous stimulus to their understanding of capitalism and of the changing conditions for the class struggle on the eve of its decadent phase.

We can see the stimulus of the mass strikes in the broadening of class consciousness – the spreading of revolutionary ideas among the masses of workers thrown into struggle – and in its deepening; the growing understanding of the clearest minorities of militant workers and revolutionaries about the goals and methods of the proletariat’s struggle against capitalism. We can also see the historical limitations of this understanding.

The growth of syndicalism

“Policy: I The old policy of identity of interest between employers and ourselves be abolished, and a policy of open hostility installed...” (The Miners’ Next Step, 1912)

The most significant expression of the broadening of class consciousness in Britain and Ireland in the period from 1910 to 1914 was the growth of syndicalist ideas among the most militant workers.

We have written before about the rise of syndicalism (see WR 232). As a distinctive strand of ideas it emerged in the years after 1900. But it was in the mass strikes that syndicalism played a significant role in the workers’ struggles. In fact we can say that syndicalism was the political expression of the most militant minority of the British and Irish working class in this period.

This doesn’t mean that it was ever a coherent ideology or set of positions. As a movement syndicalism always contained different and conflicting strands such as De Leonist industrial unionism, anarcho-syndicalism and the ‘amalgamation’ movement in the trade unions, but some of the key ideas that directly influenced the mass strikes were:

       an emphasis on the economic power of the working class in the factories

       the central importance of class solidarity

       the need for direct action by the workers to defend their interests

       the goal of worker’s control of industry and, ultimately, society.

Syndicalist ideas, popularised by Tom Mann, James Connolly, James Larkin and other well-known workers’ leaders, found a ready echo among younger, militant workers, already suspicious of the trade union leaderships and their conciliatory policies and looking for new, more effective ways of organising against the attacks of capital.

With hindsight we can see that syndicalism was part of an attempt by the working class to respond to changes taking place in capitalism on the eve of its decadent phase, including larger units of production, de-skilling, ‘scientific’ management methods, etc., and in particular to the growth of state capitalism and the tendency for the trade unions to be integrated into the state.

So if the trade unions were not defending the working class, the burning question for militant workers was whether they should try to transform them from within, or build new, revolutionary industrial organisations to fight capital.

One wing of the syndicalist movement argued that the trade unions could still be radicalised from the inside, and that the task was to propagandise within them for revolutionary policies. Tom Mann, for example, believed that “The trade unions are truly representative of the men, and can be moulded by the men into exactly what the men desire.”[1]

Probably the most important written statement of syndicalist ideas in Britain during the mass strikes was The Miners’ Next Step produced by the Unofficial Reform Committee in the South Wales Miners’ Federation. Faced with changes in production in the mining industry and the attacks of the employers, the younger militant workers of the URC analysed the failure of the union leadership’s conciliatory policies to secure real improvements for the workers and proposed instead “A united industrial organisation, which, recognising the war of interest between workers and employers, is constructed on fighting lines...” This would be controlled by the rank and file and fight for real reforms in the mining industry like the minimum wage and the seven-hour day “on the basis of complete independence of, and hostility to all capitalist parties.”

One of the strengths of the Next Step was its emphasis on involving all the workers in the practical organisation of the struggle. Political action was not rejected but defined as parliamentary action because relevant legislative measures would demand “the presence in parliament of men who directly represent, and are amenable to, the wishes and instructions of the workmen”. The URC’s ultimate objective was “...to amalgamate all workers into one national and international union, to work for the taking over of all industries, by the workmen themselves.”[2]

The central problem of this vision was that, in emphasising the economic power of the working class, it underestimated the political power of the capitalist class; there is no mention of the fact that the bourgeoisie might oppose this process of the gradual take-over of industry by the workers or of the consequent need for a confrontation with the capitalist state in order to achieve revolutionary change.

The militant workers behind The Miners’ Next Step described in detail how their leaders became corrupted by the role they were forced to play, and sought to avoid this by making the existing unions act under the direct control of the workers. But another wing of the syndicalist movement – the dual or industrial unionists – believed that the existing trade unions could not be made to do this and that the task was to build new revolutionary unions.

Both strategies faced insurmountable obstacles: building mass organisations to replace the trade unions was never going to be realistic in Britain given the historical attachment of the working class to this institution (in fact the period of the mass strikes saw a huge rise in union membership), while the policy of ‘boring from within’ inevitably came up against the entrenched power of the union bureaucracy, which would never willingly give up its control.

The test for revolutionaries

The popularity of syndicalism and the spread of its ideas among militant workers were due at least in part to the weakness of the marxist movement and its lack of influence among militant workers. But the real problem was not so much its size as the strength of opportunism which dominated the whole workers’ movement by this time. The hardened opportunist tendency which dominated the leadership of some socialist groups was firmly wedded to parliamentary and reformist tactics, and viewed spontaneous, violent mass action as a serious threat to its position rather than as any kind of opportunity for advancing the cause of the revolutionary proletariat.

If opportunism was the greater danger, sectarianism was undoubtedly the lesser: there were plenty of socialists in Britain who regarded strikes at best as a ‘last resort’ (like the Socialist Party of Great Britain), or at worst as a criminal waste of energy and diversion from the ‘real’ struggle for socialism.

Those revolutionaries who managed to avoid both opportunism and sectarianism, and attempted to relate to the workers’ struggles, still risked being swept away or falling prey to syndicalist illusions in the potential of the working class to destroy capitalism through use of its economic power alone. One negative effect of the mass strikes was to reinforce the identification of political action with parliamentarism and reformism, and to strengthen those tendencies in the revolutionary movement which rejected the need for political action at all.

Of the existing socialist groups, the reformist leadership of the Independent Labour Party was by this time far too closely linked to the Labour Party’s fortunes in parliament to be able to relate to the workers’ struggles outside it, and many left-wing dissidents in the party were attracted to syndicalism.

The right-wing leadership of the Social Democratic Federation opposed the mass strikes, complaining that: “if the workers had used their political power as they ought to have used it, all these recent strikes would have been wholly unnecessary”.[3]Under the influence of the class struggle the SDF regrouped with elements of the ILP and others influenced by syndicalist ideas to form the British Socialist Party in 1911. The leadership was forced to allow a debate on the role of the political party and its relationship to the industrial struggle, and to reinsert support for immediate demands in the new party’s constitution. During the railway and miners’ strikes BSP militants distributed manifestos calling for simultaneous action by different sectors of workers. But before long the syndicalists and many other activists were forced out of the party and the right-wing reinforced its grip.

The Socialist Labour Party, though much smaller, and despite sectarian tendencies, was better able to play the role of a revolutionary organisation in the mass strikes: it supported the raising of immediate demands and through its advocacy of industrial unions it had a practical means of relating to the workers’ struggles. The party formed a separate propaganda group, the Industrial Workers of Great Britain, which played an active role in the 1911 Singer’s strike in Glasgow where at one point the it recruited 4,000 of the 11,000 workforce and gained an important presence among Clydeside engineering workers. The SLP expelled a minority opposed to strikes and affirmed the role of the revolutionary party, successfully defending a marxist intervention in the class struggle.

The mass strikes also influenced the development of a wider and much more diverse milieu outside of the established arxist groups. There was a surge of new groupings coming more or less directly out of the struggles themselves, For example, the Daily Herald national daily paper, later to be known as the Labour Party’s mouthpiece, originated as the news-sheet of striking London print workers in 1911. The Herald Leagues which grew up around the paper were critical of state capitalism, the Labour Party and existing socialist groups, not explicitly anti-parliamentary but sympathetic to syndicalism. Probably the most influential grouping was the Industrial Syndicalist Education League around Tom Mann and Guy Bowman, which published the Industrial Syndicalist from 1910 until its collapse in 1913.

Drawing the lessons of the mass strikes

The mass strikes certainly tested revolutionaries. There were real gains: growth (albeit temporary); the (partial) regroupment of revolutionaries and a small but significant presence within the struggles themselves.

With hindsight the biggest failure of revolutionary minorities was to draw the lessons from the appearance in the mass strikes of unofficial strike committees, mass meetings, discussion groups, etc. The syndicalist movement in particular remained wedded to the two false alternatives of transforming the existing trade unions or creating new unions. At this stage it was not clear to many workers that the tendency for the trade unions to be integrated into the capitalist state was already an irreversible process, but even the clearest revolutionaries were unable to take up the work of the German and Dutch lefts around Luxemburg and Pannekoek on the lessons of the 1905 mass strike in Russia, or to grasp the historic significance of the appearance of the soviets or workers’ councils.

The biggest strength of revolutionary minorities in Britain was their recognition of the reactionary nature of state capitalism and its danger to the working class struggle. For example, the 1913 platform of the syndicalist Industrial Democracy League identified the trend towards the centralisation of capitalist state power and denounced the Liberal Party’s social welfare legislation as “the extension of the tentacles of the state into the vitals of organised labour”.[4]

The clearest revolutionaries extended this analysis to the trade unions. In 1911 the Durham miners’ leader George Harvey, a leading SLP member, warned that: “the trade union movement is tending to create a sort of organ of oppression within the masters’ organ of oppression - the state - and an army of despotic union chiefs who are interested in reconciling, as far as possible, the interests of masters and men”.[5] By 1917 this solid insight enabled the majority of the SLP to conclude that capitalism had definitely entered its epoch of decadence, and to support the formation of unofficial workshop committees as embryo soviets.

Conclusion

The sheer breadth and intensity of the pre-war mass strikes encouraged illusions in the ability of the working class to emancipate itself through the use of its economic power alone, and despite the depth of opportunism in the workers’ movement the integration of the existing trade unions into the capitalist state was not yet proven by the tests of war and revolution. It was the outbreak of imperialist war in 1914 that sealed the trade unions’ betrayal through their abandonment of internationalism and confirmed the necessity for a revolutionary assault on the power of the capitalist state.

The pre-war mass strikes in Britain and Ireland were inevitably overshadowed by the even greater revolutionary wave that ended the first world war which culminated in the seizure of political power by the working class in Russia. But today, when we are seeing the spectre of class struggle return to haunt the decrepit capitalist system, again led by younger generations of workers anxious to fight back against the attacks of capital, we can find in these struggles – in their immense militancy, their capacity to organise and extend the movement, and willingness to take on the capitalist class – a rich source of lessons and inspiration. One key lesson is the central importance of the revolutionary minorities of the working class in clarifying its historic tasks and the methods and tactics needed to achieve them.  

MH 26/3/11

see

After NATO bombings on a building in Tripoli killed a son and three grandchildren of Muammar Gaddafi, there were revenge attacks on the cities of Benghazi and Misrata, and attacks on the British and Italian embassies, among other targets. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by American special forces was supposedly undertaken in revenge for the 3000 9/11 murders. When the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya heard of bin Laden’s death they called for Gaddafi to face the same fate.

This spiral of murder and destruction is further evidence of capitalism’s appetites in an era where every state, every capitalist faction that aspires to power, is compelled to follow the military option and the path of terror.

In this capitalist world the antagonists go under many flags, but they are all pursuing the same goals. Gaddafi is favoured by many who call themselves socialists, despite being at the heart of a regime for whom repression is second nature and vicious retaliation comes automatically. Barrack Obama is supposed to be a ‘friend of freedom’, yet his military campaigns, from the bombing of Pakistan within the first few days of taking office, just continue from where George Bush left off. Bin Laden is seen by some as an ‘anti-imperialist’ hero, but his ultimate dream of a multi-national caliphate is one of the oldest imperialist projects going. And as for the Libyan ‘rebels’ of the National Transitional Council, they can be marked down as enemies of the exploited and oppressed on a number of counts, from the backing of the US, the calls for the return to a monarchy, and the basic fact that so many of them were not so long ago integral to Gaddafi’s state apparatus.

Following the killing of bin Laden there were commentators in the US who spoke about the possibility of ‘closure’ for the victims of 9/11. With the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iran and Libya there is clearly no closure for those who have been caught up in and become victims of the American ‘war on terror.’

As Obama said in his first speech celebrating the killing of bin Laden “his death does not mark the end of our effort. There's no doubt that al-Qaida will continue to pursue attacks against us.” Indeed it will, and if one terrorist force is diminished then others can easily take its place. Obama asserted that “we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to”. American imperialism, however it is minded, cannot impose its will in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, despite being the world’s biggest military power. On the contrary, all its actions tend, in Obama’s words not to “make the world a safer place” but exacerbate conflicts and chaos across the face of the planet.

Some things have changed since 9/11. In the Middle East, for example, despite the fantasies of Gaddafi, al-Qaida has never really got a foothold, whatever its strengths in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the recent social movements in various Arab countries, whatever their confusions, there has been no sign that protesters have been going in the direction of al-Qaidaist ideas, adoption of sharia law or other Islamic tenets. On the contrary, many of the demonstrators have explicitly rejected the vicious sectarian and gender divisions which al-Qaida stands for. A bigger obstacle to the movements in North Africa and the Middle East has been the myth of democracy, which serves to prevent the working class from acting as an independent force in society.

All the figureheads of capitalism, whether in the White House, in a tent in the desert, in a cave in the mountains, or in the affluent suburbs, stand for a world of war and destruction and against the liberation of humanity.  

Car 2/5/11

In 2007, when the debt bubble burst, it was the big banks that were on the verge of collapse. They only kept going thanks to massive infusions of credit from the treasuries of the world’s states. This was done not because governments do what the greedy bankers tell them to do, but because the capitalist system could not tolerate the implosion of its global financial machinery.

But the bail-out of the banks did not solve capitalism’s problems. On the contrary: in the space of a few years we have gone from the bail out of banks to the bail out of entire states. First Greece, then Ireland, then, in April 2011, Portugal. Unable to meet its sovereign debt obligations, Portugal has had to appeal to the European Union to rescue it to the tune of 80 billion euro. Speculation is rife about who will be next: the most likely candidate is Spain, but Britain, whose government is taking desperate preventive action with its programme of savage cuts, looks equally shaky in the eyes of the world’s economic think-tanks. The need to keep the weaker members of the EU afloat is putting an enormous strain on the stronger economies, like Germany, and is threatening to undermine the stability of the euro and of the EU itself. And it’s not just in Europe: Japan, whose national debt is twice the size of its GDP, and even the mighty USA, are heading in the same direction. A spokesman for the International Monetary Fund, Jose Vinals, recently expressed the view that US government bonds are no longer without risk. And who will bail out the USA if it too defaults on its gigantic debts?

There could hardly be a more graphic illustration of the bankruptcy, not of this or that company, this or that country, but the entire capitalist system. In an article in this issue, ‘The demise of credit’ we look at the causes of the present world economic crisis, which has opened up a new chapter in the long historical decline of the capitalist system. It is vital to understand that the capitalist system has no route out of this crisis, not least because it means that the capitalist class, whatever the country and whatever the shade of government, has no alternative but to attack the living standards of the vast majority of us, to force us to accept austerity, poverty and sacrifice – not because they are ‘ideologically driven’, but because they are driven by the very material needs of a dying system of production.  

WR 1/5/11

More than 50,000 health service jobs are due to be lost, including doctors, nurses, midwives and ambulance personnel. In fact Trusts plan to shed 12% of qualified nursing posts over the next 4 years, while the NHS already relies on their unpaid overtime, carried out by 95% of nurses with more than 1 in 5 doing this every shift. Small wonder that the RCN Chief Executive notes this “could have a catastrophic impact on patient safety and care” (Nursing Times, 12/4/11). At the same time NHS staff are not just facing the public sector pay freeze but also a threat to “allow employers to agree locally with their trade unions to freeze incremental pay progression for all staff groups, in return for a commitment to provide a guarantee of 'no compulsory redundancies' for all staff in bands 1 to 6” (www.nhsemployers.org [256]), along with plans to allow more health care providers to ignore national scales and set their own pay. In other words, there is an attempt to drive down pay, as well as changes to the pension scheme.

The key to understanding the changes going on in the NHS today is cost-cutting. According to the Public Accounts Committee “under the previous government, only £15bn of £35bn savings promised in Labour's 2007 comprehensive spending review had been achieved... and of those reported savings, just 38 per cent were definitely legitimate value for money savings” (www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=14649 [257]). It’s not about this or that Labour or coalition government, or ideology, but – like the pensions, like benefits – simple cost-cutting.